- UK: Why Are Dangerous Jihadists Being Released Early From Prison?
UK: Why Are Dangerous Jihadists Being Released Early From Prison?
Authored by Soeren Kern via The Gatestone Institute,
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has vowed to toughen sentencing guidelines for convicted terrorists after a newly-released prisoner carried out a jihadist attack in London.
On February 2, Sudesh Amman, a 20-year-old jihadist from Harrow in north-west London, stabbed two people in a knife rampage on Streatham High Road before he was shot dead by police. He had been released from prison just days earlier after serving less than half of his sentence for terrorism offenses.
Amman, who was carrying a 10-inch kitchen knife, wearing a fake suicide bomber vest, and shouting “Allahu Akbar” (“Allah is the Greatest”), had been under active police surveillance at the time of the attack, which London police described as an “Islamist-related terrorist incident.”
In December 2018, Amman was sentenced to three years and four months in prison after pleading guilty to 13 counts of expressing support for Islamist terrorism and possessing and sharing Islamic State and al-Qaeda propaganda. He was 18 years old at the time.
Amman was arrested in May 2018 after posting Islamist propaganda online. At the time, police said that he had expressed support for the Islamic State, sent beheading videos to his girlfriend, and asked her to kill her “kuffar” (non-Muslim) parents. He also wrote about carrying out a jihadist attack:
“If you can’t make a bomb because family, friends or spies are watching or suspecting you, take a knife, Molotov [cocktail], sound bombs or a car at night and attack the crusaders, police and soldiers of taghut [idolatry], or western embassies in every country you are in this planet.”
In a search of Amman’s computer, police found documents titled, “How to Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom”, “U.S. Army Knife Fighting Manual Techniques” and “Bloody Brazilian Knife Fighting Techniques.”
During Amman’s trial, police noted that he had a “fierce interest in violence and martyrdom.” Acting Commander Alexis Boon, then head of the Metropolitan police counter terrorism command, explained:
“His fascination with dying in the name of terrorism was clear in a notepad we recovered from his home. Amman had scrawled his ‘life goals’ in the notepad and top of the list, above family activities, was dying a martyr and going to ‘Jannah‘ — the afterlife.”
“It’s not clear how Amman became radicalized, but it is apparent from his messages that it had been at least a year in development. Whatever the circumstances, this case is a reminder of the need to be vigilant to signs of radicalization and report it.”
Amman’s attack is the second one in the British capital in the past three months. On November 29, 2019, Usman Khan, a 28-year-old jihadist from Stoke-on-Trent, stabbed and killed two people in a knife rampage near London Bridge. Like Amman, Khan had also been released early from prison.
A day after Khan’s attack, Boris Johnson announced a review into the license (parole) conditions of 74 terrorists who had been released from prison early. He also vowed to end the practice of automatically releasing serious offenders from prison before the end of their terms:
“The terrorist who attacked yesterday was sentenced 11 years ago under laws passed in 2008 which established automatic early release.
“This system has got to end. I repeat, this has got to end…. If you are convicted of a serious terrorist offense, there should be a mandatory minimum sentence of 14 years — and some should never be released.
“Further, for all terrorism and extremist offenses, the sentence announced by the judge must be the time actually served — these criminals must serve every day of their sentence, with no exceptions.”
A Sentencing Bill included in the Queen’s Speech in October 2019 would have changed the automatic release point from halfway to two-thirds for adult offenders serving sentences of four years or more for serious violence or sexual offenses. The bill, however, stalled due to a hung parliament, and was shelved later that month when new elections were called.
The latest attack sparked considerable anger. In an interview with Sky News, the editor of Spiked magazine, Brendan O’Neill, spoke for many when he said:
“The Streatham terror stabbing is a scandal. This man was an Islamist maniac. He was devoted to ISIS and he had planned to kill non-believers. And yet he was let out of jail after just 18 months. We’ve got to start taking Islamic terrorism more seriously.”
Paul Stott, a terrorism researcher with the London-based Henry Jackson Society, added:
“We need an immediate moratorium on the release of terrorist prisoners, whilst the government reviews each individual case.”
In an interview with the Daily Mail, an unidentified government source said that according to British law, Amman had to be released from prison early, despite the threat he posed to society:
“There had been concerns when he [Amman] was in prison but there were no powers for any authority to keep him behind bars.
“There was nothing that could be done to keep him behind bars under existing laws, hence why he was under surveillance and strict licensing conditions.
“He had served half of his sentence, which was more than three years, so he had to be released despite concerns over his conduct.
“The public will look at this case and say why was this individual not kept behind bars and the Prime Minister shares that view.”
After the latest attack, Johnson promised “fundamental changes” to the system for dealing with convicted terrorists. He said that terrorists currently in prison will lose their right to automatic early release halfway through their sentences. Johnson stressed that the legal concept of automatic early release for people “who obviously continue to pose a threat to the public has come to the end of its useful life.”
On February 3, Secretary of State for Justice Robert Buckland announced that the government would introduce emergency legislation — The Counterterrorism Bill — to end the automatic early release from prison of terror offenders:
“We cannot have the situation, as we saw tragically in yesterday’s case, where an offender — a known risk to innocent members of the public — is released early by automatic process of law without any oversight by the Parole Board.
“We will, therefore, introduce emergency legislation to ensure an end to terrorist offenders getting released automatically having served half of their sentence with no check or review.”
Buckland added that the changes would be retroactive and apply to jihadists currently in prison:
“We face an unprecedented situation of severe gravity and, as such, it demands that the government responds immediately and that this legislation will therefore also apply to serving prisoners.
“The earliest point at which the offenders will now be considered for release will be once they have served two-thirds of their sentence and, crucially, we will introduce a requirement that no terrorist offender will be released before the end of their full custodial term unless the Parole Board agrees.”
A total of 353 convicted and suspected Islamist terrorists were released from prison between June 2012 and June 2019, according to Home Office statistics cited by the Daily Mail.
In October 2018, the Islamist firebrand preacher Anjem Choudary, described as Britain’s “most dangerous extremist,” was released from prison after serving only half of the five-and-a-half-year sentence he received in 2016 for pledging allegiance to the Islamic State.
Prison authorities could not prevent his release: under British sentencing guidelines, prisoners — even those who are still a risk to the public — automatically become eligible for release under license (parole) after serving half their terms.
In an essay published by the Daily Mail, Philip Flower, a former chief superintendent with the Metropolitan Police, warned that the fight against violent Islamism in Britain was being hampered by political correctness:
“As a retired senior police officer involved in containing terrorist and other threats during a 40-year career, I want to tell you of the intense frustrations that will be felt today across British policing. They will feel utterly let down by the judicial system.
“When I was a constable, I could arrest and process a suspect in an hour, maximum. Today, it takes a day or more.
“The police are mired in bureaucracy, while the judicial system has become an institutional cloud-cuckoo land.
“As a society, we have to decide how to deal with terrorist suspects. It takes around 32 police officers to maintain around-the-clock surveillance of a single terror suspect.
“It is insane to attempt to maintain this level of supervision of the thousands of individuals known to be of interest to the security services and counter-terrorism police. It seems as though the Streatham perpetrator was being watched by armed police, yet still he managed to stab shoppers….
“If we are to release convicted terrorists from jail early, then we would have to recruit thousands and thousands more police to oversee them, which of course will never happen because there is not enough money and we would find that level of intrusion unacceptable in a free society.
“There is a wider problem of maintaining the morale of the officers charged with keeping the public safe from fanatics.
“Bluntly, how would you feel if you were told to keep track of known terrorists who have been released from prison to satisfy the politically correct assumptions of our justice system?”
Ian Acheson, a veteran prison officer who in 2015 led an independent review of Islamist extremism in British prisons, told the BBC’s Today program that the UK’s risk-management system is fundamentally broken:
“We are going to have to accept that we have to be much more skeptical and robust about dealing with the risk of harm.
“We may need to accept that there are certain people who are so dangerous they must be kept in prison indefinitely….
“I am still unconvinced that the prison service itself has the aptitude or the attitude to assertively manage terrorist offenders.”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 02/07/2020 – 02:00 - Blacklist Valley: How Big Tech Reshapes Politics By Censoring Conservative Ideas
Blacklist Valley: How Big Tech Reshapes Politics By Censoring Conservative Ideas
Authored by Peter Hasson, op-ed via WashingtonExaminer.com,
For better or worse, social media is the new public square. Of adults, 68% use Facebook, 73% use YouTube, and a quarter use Twitter. The numbers are much higher for adults under 50. Two-thirds of adults and roughly 4 in 5 under 50 use social media to consume news. Three-quarters of Facebook users are on the site every day, and Twitter users have a disproportionate influence on the media because so many journalists are on the service.
The size and scale of social media companies exploded primarily because they presented themselves as open platforms — blank slates. Google, Facebook, and Twitter all characterized their products as engines for social improvement. “We think of Twitter as the global town hall,” said former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo. “We are the free speech wing of the free speech party.”
Costolo was Twitter’s chief executive from 2010 until 2015 and the immediate predecessor of current CEO Jack Dorsey. Twitter’s general manager in the United Kingdom, Andy Yang, likewise described Twitter as the “free speech wing of the free speech party” in March 2012. Google became a multibillion-dollar company by offering a portal for free, unrestricted information to anyone with access to the internet; famously, its original motto was “Don’t be evil.” An internal Facebook memo circulated in June 2016 stated that at Facebook, “we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is de facto good.”
The public has given these three tech companies (and others) enormous power to select the information we read, share, and discuss with our neighbors and friends. We’ve gotten so accustomed to the role they play in our lives that we fail to notice that Big Tech is sifting through the available information and narrowing, and prioritizing, our choices. Although Facebook, Google, and Twitter once touted themselves as bastions of democracy and free speech, they are now openly moving toward direct censorship and media manipulation – and specifically targeting conservative ideas and personalities.
They have already acquiesced to their new censorship fetish. In March 2018, Google circulated an internal memo that instructed employees on the benefits of censorship. In the memo, which was titled “The Good Censor,” Google conceded that while the internet was “founded upon utopian principles of free speech,” free speech is no longer en vogue. “Tech companies are adapting their stance towards censorship” in direct response to “the anxiety of users and governments.” The memo said that “tech firms have gradually shifted away from unmediated free speech and towards censorship and moderation” but framed that shift as a positive development. One major way that tech companies are “stepping into the role of moderator” is by “significantly amping up the number of moderators they employ — in YouTube’s case increasing the number of people on the lookout for inappropriate content to more than 10,000.” It argued that censorship was necessary partly because of users “behaving badly.”
The most alarming part of the missive, however, was that it spoke approvingly of foreign governments that were censoring online speech. Google framed the acts as “taking steps to make online spaces safer, more regulated, and more similar to their offline laws. Protected from hate speech on the street? Now you are on the net too …” Twitter has completely and publicly abandoned its brand as the “free speech wing of the free speech party,” with Dorsey claiming the whole “free speech wing” thing was one giant “joke.” His company, once seemingly devoted to the free expression of its users, now says it is prioritizing making users feel safe from others’ speech. Facebook, too, is openly rebranding itself as a benevolent censor. Here’s what Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told the Senate Commerce and Judiciary committees in April 2018 (emphasis added):
Overall, I would say that we’re going through a broader philosophical shift in how we approach our responsibility as a company. For the first 10 or 12 years of the company, I viewed our responsibility as primarily building tools that, if we could put those tools in people’s hands, then that would empower people to do good things. What I think we’ve learned now across a number of issues, not just data privacy, but also fake news and foreign interference in elections, is that we need to take a more proactive role and a broader view of our responsibility. It’s not enough to just build tools. We need to make sure that they’re used for good. And that means that we need to now take a more active view in policing the ecosystem and in watching and kind of looking out and making sure that all of the members in our community are using these tools in a way that’s going to be good and healthy.
Three forces are driving Big Tech’s online censorship.
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Two are external and related: market pressures and de-platforming campaigns by liberal activists and journalists.
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The third pressure is internal: Silicon Valley is staggeringly one-sided politically.
Profit margins and market pressures are crucial levers that left-wing ideologues use to pull tech giants and other corporations in the direction of censorship. Companies want to avoid controversy, and, in the era of outrage mobs, that means avoiding offending the Left, which controls most of the cultural institutions in America. That’s part of the reason why massive companies are embracing left-wing politics in advertising, such as what Gillette did with its “toxic masculinity” ad. Left-wing activists amplify those pressures with smear campaigns and boycotts intended to rattle advertisers and investors, forcing the hands of tech companies. If you convince corporate marketing agencies that advertising on Facebook is risky, you can be certain that Facebook will take some form of action to shed controversy and reassure investors.
The external pressures of left-wing activists are compounded by the internal pressures of the companies’ employees, who want Big Tech to embrace censorship against nonliberal opinions as a moral and political necessity. The internal office cultures at Facebook, Google, and Twitter have always been overwhelmingly left-leaning, but the election of Donald Trump as president has made them far more radical. I told one Silicon Valley insider that I thought tech culture now resembled the left-wing, activist culture on college campuses. He replied, “They’re the exact same people.” Their political opinions are certainly monochromatic. Of the $8.1 million that tech industry workers donated to presidential candidates during the 2016 campaign, 95% of it went to Hillary Clinton. Among donations from the Silicon Valley area specifically, 99% went to Clinton.
So, maybe it’s not surprising that Google, Facebook, and Twitter have all become vehicles for left-wing activism. The companies encourage employees to bring their “authentic selves” to work. One Silicon Valley executive told me, “We want people to … bring their entire perspective and all their values to work, and in the positive sense, that means getting rid of a huge distinction between my professional life and my personal life.” For left-wing activists in Silicon Valley, their professional, personal, and political lives are all one. That’s why Twitter launched an “intersectionality” initiative for its employees and Google gives millions to left-wing causes — to signal its allegiance to the tribe.
In 2017, the nonprofit Lincoln Network conducted a survey of tech workers in Silicon Valley, including those employed at Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft. The political leanings of those surveyed were more politically diverse than Silicon Valley’s overall population: 29% were liberal, 24% were libertarian, 22% were conservative, and 16% were centrist. But on one thing, they agreed: 75% of the liberals and 70% of the conservatives characterized their workplace as either “liberal” or “very liberal” and fewer than 2% of the survey-takers said their places of work were conservative.
Even some of the liberal respondents thought that left-wing intolerance had gone too far. One liberal tech worker said, “I witnessed repeated calls from managers and nonmanagers alike for people to be fired for the political views they expressed.” Another liberal employee said, “There are people who are looking for a reason to be offended, and any sort of disagreement would make them wonder if I’m a secret Trump supporter. The idea of ‘I agree with you 90%’ is not enough.” One self-identified libertarian said, “I have lost multiple talented colleagues who resigned rather than continue in the face of an increasingly extreme, narrow-minded, and regressive environment here at Google. It’s terrifying here. A real horror show. Every day could be my last.”
Eighty-nine percent of respondents who identified as “very conservative” said they didn’t feel comfortable expressing their opinions at work. “It’s a postmodern, secularist Silicon Valley viewpoint. Highly liberal. It’s motivated by changing the world masquerading as intellectualism,” said one conservative tech employee. A libertarian said “there were many groups devoted to identity politics” in his company, and every one of them was leftist. “If you’re not part of the liberal Democrat crowd, you’re an outsider. Talks are often politicized, whether overtly or not. The entire executive team leans in a certain direction, and you don’t want to be the odd one out for fear of being ostracized … Nobody who didn’t fit the company’s mold talked about their political views. The company was very homogenous in that sense.” One conservative employee said, “There is overwhelming internal support for leftist political candidates, policies, and ideas, and they are frequently expressed … There are zero to very few senior people who dare to speak up or represent an alternative (more conservative) point of view in company debates or policy decisions.”
This groupthink affects everything that Big Tech does, every decision it makes, every program it releases. As a former Google engineer noted, Google’s algorithms reflect the assumptions and biases of their creators. The discussion about tech platforms and political bias often (and understandably) centers on what is or isn’t allowed on Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, but the other half of the picture is what is and isn’t prioritized on a platform. Broadly speaking, tech companies censor users and content in two ways.
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The first, which we’ll call “hard censorship,” is pretty straightforward: deleting content or suspending users.
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The second method, which we’ll call “soft censorship,” involves tech companies making content harder to find.
Hard censorship is tearing down a roadside billboard; soft censorship is making the billboard difficult to see by erecting other billboards in front of it. Soft censorship by tech companies can be just as effective as hard censorship. Studies show that people rarely click past the first page of Google or YouTube results. Even fewer click past the second or third page. So, pushing a link off the first page (or two or three) of Google is nearly the same as removing it from Google results altogether. The same is true with your Facebook and Twitter feeds: Companies don’t have to delete content to make sure you don’t see it.
Since 2016, every major tech company, including Facebook, Google, YouTube, and Twitter, has been busy retooling algorithms or news feeds or monetization standards in ways that benefit liberals and sideline conservatives. Big Tech also partners with left-wing groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center to “flag” supposedly problematic content. The group falsely labels individual conservatives as “extremists” and conservative organizations as “hate groups” and then promotes more restrictive content policies against alleged “hate speech.”
To give you some idea of the advocacy group’s standards, it once accused Ben Carson of being an “extremist” for stating his belief that marriage is between a man and a woman. Immersed in scandals of its own, the organization has been widely discredited. But it still works closely with Google engineers who design the digital tools and algorithms to police hate speech on YouTube as part of Google’s “Trusted Flaggers” program. Google kept its collaboration with the Southern Poverty Law Center a secret, hidden behind a confidentiality agreement, and the group only admitted the partnership after I broke the story. All of these partnerships are occurring while the advocacy group publicly keeps pressure on Facebook, Google, and Twitter, calling for them to do more to combat “hate speech” on their platforms, which invariably means giving the organization more power in its private dealings with the companies. The Southern Poverty Law Center led five other left-wing groups in forming a coalition called “Change the Terms” that aims to pressure all major technology service providers into setting speech codes governing what their clients say both on and off their platforms.
The coalition demands that each company agree to implement a specific set of policies already drafted by the activists. Among the required changes: empowering third-party organizations (such as, say, the Southern Poverty Law Center) to flag “hateful” actors. The activists’ targets aren’t limited to Facebook, Google, and Twitter (although those companies are certainly on the list) but also include credit card companies and crowdfunding sites. Once a company caves to the pressure and agrees to adopt the left-wing contract, it has essentially deputized the coalition to decide who can stay on its platform or use its services and who must leave. Once the contract is official, the activists immediately shift gears to identify the users or customers the company is now required to ban from its platform. Left-wingers’ plan for weaponizing tech platforms bears a resemblance to the “social credit score” system adopted by the Chinese government. Only instead of the government monitoring your private behavior and limiting your access to society as a result, it’s a collective of left-wing advocacy groups partnered with multinational corporations.
First Amendment rights do not protect you from private organizations’ limitations on speech. It’s a devious strategy, and it’s working. Media Matters is a left-wing political group devoted to silencing conservative viewpoints in the media. For much of its history, it focused on attacking Fox News, but in recent years, it targeted conservative voices online as well. Media Matters presented a 44-page memo to liberal donors at a January 2017 summit that bragged about its plans to work with Facebook and Google to destroy nonliberal media outlets. The memo argued that enlisting Big Tech in the left-wing campaign to eliminate conservative media is essential if liberals hope to defeat Trump in 2020. Media Matters promised to accomplish exactly that. “Key right-wing targets will see their influence diminished as a result of our work,” it promised.
Leftists don’t need to banish every conservative from social media; they only need to dominate social media the way they dominate the mainstream media. They’re OK with discussion that takes place within boundaries they set (as on MSNBC) and so long as they win the elections that matter to them (such as the White House). Since Nov. 8, 2016, they have shifted the digital landscape against conservative voices. By Nov. 3, 2020, they will have transformed (or rigged) social media in ways that will have far-reaching implications for America.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/06/2020 – 23:55 -
- NYT: 'Iran-Backed Militia' Attack That Provoked Soleimani Killing Was Possible ISIS False Flag
NYT: ‘Iran-Backed Militia’ Attack That Provoked Soleimani Killing Was Possible ISIS False Flag
The initial major rationale and justification the US administration offered for the drone assassination of IRGC Gen. Qassem Soleimani and commander of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis was the Dec.27 rocket attack on K1 camp in Kirkuk, which houses coalition forces.
That attack involving surface-to-surface missile strikes killed an American contractor and reportedly wounded several US troops. Washington immediately blamed the Iran-backed Iraqi paramilitary group Khataib Hezbollah, with Mike Pompeo saying of the attack: “We will not stand for the Islamic Republic of Iran to take actions that put American men and women in jeopardy,” after he briefed President Trump. But top Iraqi military and intelligence officials are now calling this entire narrative into question.
A new lengthy New York Times investigative report cites multiple top Iraqi officials who go on record to say of their analysis of the Dec.27 Kirkuk incident: “These facts all point to the Islamic State, Iraqi officials say.”
ISIS terrorists in Iraq, file image. The Pentagon says it has evidence decisively pinning it on Khataib Hezbollah, known for its closeness to Tehran; however, the paramilitary group itself has denied that it was behind the operation. US officials have from the start been scant on details and have not made public any evidence or intelligence.
This led some analysts in the days after the attack to question whether ISIS cells, still known to be active in the area, might have been behind it — given also it would be to the Sunni terrorist group’s benefit to sow a major rift between US and local Iraqi Shia forces, which is precisely what happened (Trump has recently gone so far as to threaten “very big sanctions” on Baghdad if US forces are kicked out). Alternately the White House perhaps appeared ready to manufacture a justification to take out Soleimani.
Further, as detailed in the Times report, the white Kia pick-up from which the rockets were launched was found near a known ISIS execution site, in a heavily Sunni area not known to have had a Shia paramilitary presence since 2014:
But Iraqi military and intelligence officials have raised doubts about who fired the rockets that started the spiral of events, saying they believe it is unlikely that the militia the United States blamed for the attack, Khataib Hezbollah, carried it out.
…Iraqi officials say their doubts are based on circumstantial evidence and long experience in the area where the attack took place.
The rockets were launched from a Sunni Muslim part of Kirkuk Province notorious for attacks by the Islamic State, a Sunni terrorist group, which would have made the area hostile territory for a Shiite militia like Khataib Hezbollah.
Khataib Hezbollah has not had a presence in Kirkuk Province since 2014.
The Islamic State, however, had carried out three attacks relatively close to the base in the 10 days before the attack on K-1. Iraqi intelligence officials sent reports to the Americans in November and December warning that ISIS intended to target K-1, an Iraqi air base in Kirkuk Province that is also used by American forces.
And the abandoned Kia pickup was found was less than 1,000 feet from the site of an ISIS execution in September of five Shiite buffalo herders.
The NYT further says this single event set off “a chain of events that brought the United States and Iran to the brink of war” which President Trump confided at a private luncheon this week was “closer than you thought”.
The attack that provoked the Soleimani killing may have been an ISIS false flag. It wouldn’t be the first time unfortunately that the US has been manipulated by Sunnis Islamists to do their bidding. Also can’t rule out US intelligence itself having known. https://t.co/ryJg3dW5Nb pic.twitter.com/3QRb779ivL
— Richard Hanania (@RichardHanania) February 6, 2020
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Brig. General Ahmed Adnan, the Iraqi chief of intelligence for the federal police at K-1, told the NYT: “All the indications are that it was Daesh.” He said further: “I told you about the three incidents in the days just before in the area — we know Daesh’s movements.”
“We as Iraqi forces cannot even come to this area unless we have a large force because it is not secure. How could it be that someone who doesn’t know the area could come here and find that firing position and launch an attack?” he questioned.
Anonymous US officials, however, claim that evidence from within the Kia pickup points to Khataib Hezbollah, and also cited “multiple strains of intelligence” though without making it known.
Interestingly, amid a general breakdown in trust between Baghdad and Washington, a top Iraqi general has said the US side hasn’t even shared its claimed evidence that Khataib Hezbollah was behind the Kirkuk attack:
“We have requested the American side to share with us any information, any evidence, but they have not sent us any information,” Lt. Gen. Muhammad al-Bayati, the chief of staff for former Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi, said in an interview.
The director general of Iraqi Intelligence and Counterterrorism, Abu Ali al-Basri, said the United States did not consult Iraq before carrying out the Dec. 29 counterattacks on Khataib Hezbollah.
“They did not ask for my analysis of what happened in Kirkuk and neither did they share any of their information,” he said. “Usually, they would do both.”
The bombshell NYT report further collects eyewitness accounts and other Iraqi official statements, all of which strongly suggests the chain of events which led to Soleimani’s Jan.3 killing, which in turn led to an Iranian ‘revenge’ attack with ballistic missiles on Ain al-Asad Air Base, wounding scores of troops (we later found out as part of an ever growing number of solders with ‘Traumatic Brain Injury’ from the blasts), was a possible ‘false flag’ event undertaken by ISIS meant to be pinned on the Islamic State’s Shia enemies backed by Iran.
US forces in Iraq, via the AP. As Northeastern University counter-terrorism expert Max Abrahms observes: “Let’s recap. Pompeo said Soleimani was killed because he was an imminent threat, a claim he couldn’t substantiate even in private settings.”
Abrahms said further on Twitter: “The escalation began with a Shia militia attack in which the best evidence indicates the perpetrators were actually ISIS, Soleimani’s enemy.”
The White House wanted to kill Soleimani. So, they manufactured a narrative to justify the decision. https://t.co/sMiOVA0b9H
— Max Abrahms (@MaxAbrahms) February 6, 2020
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Ultimately, the United States stood on the brink of major war with Iran which could have spiraled into a World War 3 scenario — all of which was potentially initiated by an ISIS false flag event designed to unleash more regional chaos.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/06/2020 – 23:35 - How Washington "Liberates" Free Countries
How Washington “Liberates” Free Countries
Authored by Andre Vltcheck via Off-Guardian.org,
There are obviously some serious linguistic issues and disagreements between the West and the rest of the world. Essential terms like “freedom”, “democracy”, “liberation”, even “terrorism”, are all mixed up and confused; they mean something absolutely different in New York, London, Berlin, and in the rest of the world.
Before we begin analyzing, let us recall that countries such as the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the United States, as well as other Western nations, have been spreading colonialist terror to basically all corners of the world.
And in the process, they developed effective terminology and propaganda, which has been justifying, even glorifying acts such as looting, torture, rape and genocides. Basically, first Europe, and later North America literally “got away with everything, including mass murder”.
The native people of Americas, Africa and Asia have been massacred, their voices silenced. Slaves were imported from Africa. Great Asian nations, such as China, what is now “India” and Indonesia, got occupied, divided and thoroughly plundered.
And all was done in the name of spreading religion, “liberating” people from themselves, as well as “civilizing them”.
Nothing has really changed.
To date, people of great nations with thousands of years of culture, are treated like infants; humiliated, and as if they were still in kindergarten, told how to behave, and how to think.
Sometimes if they “misbehave”, they get slapped. Periodically they get slapped so hard, that it takes them decades, even centuries, to get back to their feet. It took China decades to recover from the period of “humiliation”. India and Indonesia are presently trying to recuperate, from the colonial barbarity, and from, in the case of Indonesia, the 1965 U.S.-administered fascist coup.
But if you go back to the archives in London, Brussels or Berlin, all the monstrous acts of colonialism, are justified by lofty terms. Western powers are always “fighting for justice”; they are “enlightening” and “liberating”. No regrets, no shame and no second thoughts. They are always correct!
Like now; precisely as it is these days.
Presently, the West is trying to overthrow governments in several independent countries, on different continents. From Bolivia (the country has been already destroyed) to Venezuela, from Iraq to Iran, to China and Russia. The more successful these countries get, the better they serve their people, the more vicious the attacks from abroad are, the tougher the embargos and sanctions imposed on them are. The happier the citizens are, the more grotesque the propaganda disseminated from the West gets.
In Hong Kong, some young people, out of financial interest, or out of ignorance, keep shouting: “President Trump, Please Liberate Us!” Or similar, but equally treasonous slogans. They are waving U.S., U.K. and German flags. They beat up people who try to argue with them, including their own Police Force.
So, let us see, how the United States really “liberates” countries, in various pockets of the world.
Let us visit Iran, a country which (you’d never guess it if consuming only Western mass media) is, despite the vicious embargos and sanctions, on the verge of the “highest human development index bracket” (UNDP). How is it possible? Simple. Because Iran is a socialist country (socialism with the Iranian characteristics). It is also an internationalist nation which is fighting against Western imperialism. It helps many occupied and attacked states on our planet, including Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia (before), Syria, Yemen, Palestine, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iraq, to name just a few.
So, what is the West doing? It is trying to ruin it, by all means; ruin all good will and progress. It is starving Iran through sanctions, it finances and encourages its “opposition”, as it does in China, Russia and Latin America. It is trying to destroy it.
Then, it just bombs their convoy in neighboring Iraq, killing its brave commander, General Soleimani. And, as if it was not horrid enough, it turns the tables around, and starts threatening Teheran with more sanctions, more attacks, and even with the destruction of its cultural sites.
Iran, under attack, confused, shot down, by mistake, a Ukrainian passenger jet. It immediately apologized, in horror, offering compensation. The U.S. straightway began digging into the wound. It started to provoke (like in Hong Kong) young people. The British ambassador, too, got involved!
As if Iran and the rest of the world should suddenly forget that during its attack on Iraq, more than 3 decades ago, Washington actually shot down an Iranian wide-body passenger plane (Iran Air flight 655, an Airbus-300), on a routine flight from Bandar Abbas to Dubai. In an “accident”, 290 people, among them 66 children, lost their lives. That was considered “war collateral”.
Iranian leaders then did not demand “regime change” in Washington. They were not paying for riots in New York or Chicago.
As China is not doing anything of that nature, now.
The “Liberation” of Iraq (in fact, brutal sanctions, bombing, invasion and occupation) took more than a million Iraqi lives, most of them, those of women and children. Presently, Iraq has been plundered, broken into pieces, and on its knees.
Is this the kind of “liberation” that some of the Hong Kong youngsters really want?
No? But if not, is there any other performed by the West, in modern history?
Washington is getting more and more aggressive, in all parts of the world.
It also pays more and more for collaboration.
And it is not shy to inject terrorist tactics into allied troops, organizations and non-governmental organizations. Hong Kong is no exception.
Iran, Iraq, Syria, Russia, China, Venezuela, but also many other countries, should be carefully watching and analyzing each and every move made by the United States. The West is perfecting tactics on how to liquidate all opposition to its dictates.
It is not called a “war”, yet. But it is. People are dying. The lives of millions are being ruined.
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Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/06/2020 – 23:15 - Supply Chain Shock – Here's The Most Exposed S&P500 Industries To China
Supply Chain Shock – Here’s The Most Exposed S&P500 Industries To China
We noted on Wednesday night, two-thirds of the Chinese economy has effectively shut down much of its production capacity, crippling supply chains critical to keep not only the second-largest economy in the world humming, but the entire world.
Former Morgan Stanley Asia chairman Stephen Roach warned last week that the global economy could already be in a period of vulnerability, where an exogenous shock, such as the coronavirus, could be the trigger for the next worldwide recession.
Goldman Sachs has warned that virus outbreak could reduce Chinese GDP growth in 1Q by 1.6% in year-over-year terms, or 6.4% in quarter-on-quarter annual rate terms, resulting in a sub-5% GDP 1Q print. A growth shock in China will be felt across the world as the virus has severed supply chains.
As growth expectations for China and the world come down, stocks are due for a repricing event.
S&P 500 companies generate 60.5% of their revenue from the US and the rest international.
Refinitiv data shows S&P 500 firms derive 6.2% of revenue from China and Hong Kong.
The semiconductors and semiconductor equipment industry group have about 30% of revenue exposure to China and Hong Kong, which is the most exposed industry.
A great deal of Apple’s supply chain is based in China. We noted earlier this week that much of its iPhone manufacturing plants are closed but expected to open next week. But if the plants remain closed after Monday/Tuesday, then Apple could experience iPhone shortages in the month ahead.
Dozens of companies have already announced factory shutdowns and retail shuttering in the last several weeks. The expectation is to bring everything online next week, but as per a new Nikkei report on Thursday, it seems that companies, like Honda, are already starting to postpone plant openings.
The Telegraph’s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard wrote Thursday that the scale of supply chain disruptions in China and aboard is absolutely “staggering.”
We noted on Tuesday that Hyundai Motor Co. and its sister Kia Motors Corp. suspended production lines in South Korea after it was hit with a parts shortage from China.
Volkswagen, Toyota, General Motors, and Tesla have all closed their Chinese plants, as has Foxconn closed all plants making iPhones in the country.
The supply chain chaos is pushing out from China now could soon be realized in Europe.
Fiat-Chrysler might be forced to halt production at one of its European plants if the virus doesn’t clear up within the next week or two. The company is already struggling to source parts from China.
Evans-Pritchard also warned that the collapse in Chinese oil consumption is “the biggest shock to oil markets since the Lehman crisis.”
Two-thirds of China’s economy was shut down overnight and has led to a collapse in energy demand, which now poses a significant threat to corporate bond markets across the world.
Coronavirus isn’t just infecting people and killing them, it’s also creating havoc and disrupting complex supply chains that will lead many companies to revise their earnings down in 1H20.
Mohamed El-Erian, the chief economic adviser to the insurance company Allianz, said the economic damage caused by coronavirus would play this year.
El-Erian said the economic shock to Wuhan and the surrounding manufacturing hubs is happening at a time when the global economy is slowing and interest rates among central banks are near zero.
He asks: Could coronavirus be a black swan for the global economy?
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/06/2020 – 22:55 - Iraq Is On The Brink Of An Energy Crisis
Iraq Is On The Brink Of An Energy Crisis
Authored by Simon Watkins via OilPrice.com,
As the deadline for the U.S. to renew its waiver on Iraq importing gas and electricity from Iran approaches later this month, the three key players in this ongoing geopolitical saga have been preparing for all possible outcomes. As always in the global hydrocarbons markets, particularly in the Middle East, nothing is what it seems on first sight, with each of the main countries involved looking at outcomes that go way beyond mere gas sales.
The positioning began in earnest last week with a virtue-signalling comment from the Trade Bank of Iraq’s chairman, Faisal al-Haimus, that the bank – the main vehicle through which Iraq pays for these Iranian imports – would stop processing payments if the U.S. does not renew the relevant waiver at this end of this month. This would affect the payments for the entire 1,400 megawatts (MW) of electricity and 28 million cubic metres (mcm) of gas from Iran that Iraq requires to keep its key infrastructure in power, for some of the time at least.
In this context, peak summer power demand in Iraq perennially exceeds domestic generation capabilities, made worse by its capacity to cause major civilian unrest in the country. The relatively recent widespread protests across Iraq – including in the major oil hub of Basra – were widely seen as being prompted in part by chronic electricity outages. The situation also promises to become much worse as, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), Iraq’s population is growing at a rate of over one million per year, with electricity demand set to double by 2030, reaching about 17.5 gigawatts (GW) average throughout the year.
Ahead of the waiver renewal point this month, then, Iraq has been playing both the U.S. and Iran, as part of the ongoing tightrope act in which it has been engaged since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. On the one hand, a senior oil and gas industry figure who works closely with Iran’s Petroleum Ministry exclusively told OilPrice.com last week, Iraq has repeatedly stressed to the U.S. that it cannot effectively function – including at its oil fields – without Iranian gas and electricity supplies until a realistic alternative is up and running.
This is aimed, said the source, at extracting more investment from the U.S. both directly and indirectly, including expediting deals tentatively and firmly agreed with the U.S. before the attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq occurred. The key deal remains an integral part of Iraq’s longstanding rhetoric about reducing the epic squandering of its enormous gas natural resources through flaring. This deal, involving the signing of a memorandum of understanding with a U.S. consortium led by Honeywell, would reduce Iraq’s current level of gas flaring by nearly 20%.
Specifically, Honeywell, partnering with another U.S. heavyweight, Bechtel, and Iraq’s state-owned South Gas, would build the Ratawi gas hub. This, in its first stage would process up to 300 million standard cubic feet per day (scf/d) of ‘associated gas’ (generated as a by-product of crude oil production) at five southern Iraqi oil fields: Majnoon, Gharib al-Qurna, al-lhiss, al-Tubba, and al-Siba. “Moqtada al-Sadr [the effective leader of Iraq] knows that every time there is a hint that Iraq will continue with its historically close relationship with Iran, the U.S. comes in to offer the services of its companies at beneficial terms to Iraq,” the Iran source said.
In addition to this, Iraq has two natural hedge positions against the U.S. not extending its next waiver, and leaving Iraq supposedly without Iranian gas and electricity in the very short-term before U.S. investment and deals can actually put power on the ground in Iraq.
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The first of these hedges is that Iraq will just keep the money that it already owes Iran for previous supplies. According to a comment last week from Hamid Hosseini, a spokesman for the Iranian Oil, Gas and Petrochemical Products Exporters’ Association, up to US$5 billion in payments from Iraq to Iran for past gas and electricity supplies is sitting in an escrow account at the Central Bank of Iraq, but Iran cannot touch it because of the U.S. sanctions. In fact, according to the Iran source spoken to by OilPrice.com last week, the figure is US$6.1 billion, which, if the U.S. does not extend the waiver later this month, Iraq will just keep.
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The second of Iraq’s hedges against the U.S. not extending the waiver on these imports from Iran at the end of this month is just to keep importing them anyway. Iraq has a very long porous border with Iran and an even longer history of using it – and shared facilities – to circumvent oil and gas sanctions, and there is no reason to assume that this will suddenly cease.
The question then naturally arises as to why Iran would agree to continue to supply Iraq with gas and other commodities if it cannot draw out money owed to it from the Iraq escrow account.
The answer is twofold:
First, Iran is working in a number of areas on essentially a barter-based business methodology, according to the Iran source. “It offers oil and gas resources to China and Russia and others which, in turn, offer Iran items it needs, such as technology items, chemicals, agricultural sector goods, and finance facilities, for example, so there are ways in which Iraq could pay Iran in currency of one sort or another,” he said.
The second option for Iran, and an idea of the assassinated Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander, Major General Qassem Soleimani, is that Iraq assigns leases and ownership to Iran through a wide range of IRGC-related entities to commercial real estate and businesses in the Shia-dominated areas of Iraq. This transfer of ownership on a limited scale has been taking place on an intermittent basis for a number of years, especially around Karbala, Najaf, and Nasiriyah, according to the source.
“It suits the Iranians well enough, as it is a way of cementing Iranian control across the Shia population of Iran, and it suits Iraq as well as it means it doesn’t have to part with any money, which is always a strain on the already strained budget, and it means that it can leave it to Iran to control the radical Shia elements in and around those regions,” he added.
Finally, the U.S. cannot lose either way. If it extends the waiver, it keeps the door open to Iran coming back to the table to renegotiate the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal whilst also keeping Iraq on side for future U.S. energy projects and keeping it from fully defecting to the Iran-Russia-China sphere of influence. If it does not extend the waiver then a relatively large non-Shia section of Iraq will keep the government in the state of flux that it has been since the fall of Hussein, which also benefits the U.S.
This strategy was previously known as the ‘Kissinger Doctrine’ of foreign policy – analysed in depth in my new book on the global oil market – in which the U.S. attempts to keep power in balance across a broad region through individual states fighting amongst each other, usually based on exploiting factional and or tribal and/or religious differences between groups.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/06/2020 – 22:35 -
- January Payrolls Preview: Mind The Half A Million Downward Revision
January Payrolls Preview: Mind The Half A Million Downward Revision
Following a blockbuster ADP private payrolls print of 291K, the highest in nearly 5 years, analysts expect the pace of official, BLS payroll growth to pick up (160k expected, up from 145K in January), though remain beneath recent trend rates; yet despite the ADP strength, which in the past has been a loud contrarian indicator, analysts offer the usual caveats: business surveys continue to point to payrolls growth, though the pace of growth cooled in the non-manufacturing survey. Weekly jobless claims data has stabilized near lows. Meanwhile, consumer confidence surveys bode well, with consumers expecting to see more jobs in the months ahead, though their view on wage gains pared very slightly.
Also of note, tomorrow’s report will be accompanied by the annual benchmark revision to the establishment survey, as well as the annual introduction of new population controls in the household survey. The BLS’s preliminary estimate of the establishment survey revision suggested a large downward adjustment of 501k to the level of March 2019 employment. This would imply a 42k slower pace of monthly job growth on average from April 2018 to March 2019 (+168k vs. +210k as currently reported). Revisions in the preliminary report were fairly evenly split between retail (-146k), professional services (-163k), and leisure (-175k), and focus on the BLS’ erroneous birth-death adjustments.
Courtesy of RanSquawk, here is what Wall Street expects:
- Non-farm Payrolls: Exp. 160k, Prev. 145k.
- Unemployment Rate: Exp. 3.5%, Prev. 3.5%. (FOMC currently projects 3.5% at end-2019, and 4.1% in the long run).
- Avg. Earnings M/M: Exp. 0.3%, Prev. 0.1%.
- Avg. Earnings Y/Y: Exp. 3.0%, Prev. 2.9%.
- Avg. Work Week Hours: Exp. 34.3hrs, Prev. 34.3hrs.
- Private Payrolls: Exp. 150k, Prev. 139k.
- Manufacturing Payrolls: Exp. -5k, Prev. -12k.
- Government Payrolls: Prev. 6.0k.
- U6 Unemployment Rate: Prev. 6.7%.
- Labour Force Participation: Exp. 63.1%, Prev. 63.2%.
TREND RATES:
The pace of payroll additions has eased, after the sub-trend 145k added in December. Currently, the 3-month average is 184k, running a touch beneath the 6-month pace at 189k, though both still remain above the 12-month average at 176k. Goldman estimates payrolls increased 190k in January, higher than consensus, and does not expect a significant impact
from Census employment in tomorrow’s report. Wells Fargo’s analysts argue that slower growth in the labor supply during this expansion has reduced the ‘breakeven’ number for job growth (the amount of new jobs needed to reduce the jobless rate from trend). Wells says that the weaker pace of job growth in 2019 generated little cause for concern that fundamentals in the labor market were deteriorating meaningfully. It estimates that a pace of around 85-130k monthly job additions would be required to put downward pressure on the unemployment rate, due primarily to strong labor participation trends. Trump, in his State of the Union address Tuesday, highlighted numbers such as 7 million jobs created since his election and the lowest recorded unemployment levels for African Americans, Hispanics and Asian Americans.INITIAL JOBLESS CLAIMS:
Weekly data for the payroll survey period came in at 223k (four-week average was 216.25k) compared to the 235k in the December reference period (four-week average then was 225.75k), auguring well for January’s report. After the data’s release, Pantheon Macroeconomics suggested that the underlying trend in claims was not rising, and might, perhaps, be falling again. “All the slowdown in payroll growth from the 2018 peak has been due to slower gross hiring, not rising layoffs. The spike in late December, which triggered a degree of consternation among some investors, has now reversed.”
REVISIONS:
Revisions may show “the past wasn’t as rosy as we thought,” said Ward McCarthy, chief financial economist at Jefferies LLC. “That’s again another reason to think that the deceleration in payroll growth is something we’re going to be living with going forward.” Yet even a big downward revision to payrolls won’t change the overall picture of labor-market tightness. The participation rate for prime-age workers, or those ages 25 to 54, is the highest in a decade according to Bloomberg. Fed Chair Jerome Powell has reiterated his desire to sustain the expansion “so that the strong job market reaches more of those left behind.” Companies complain about finding qualified workers, and job openings, though declining, still outnumber the unemployed. “You can’t change that story at all with revisions,” said Jennifer Lee, a senior economist at BMO Capital Markets. “Just perhaps the pace.”
ADP PAYROLLS:
The ADP’s gauge of payrolls surprised to the upside in January, printing 291k against an expected 156k. Analysts provided the usual caveats about how, although the better-than-expected data will bolster expectations of a beat in the official NFP data on Friday, the accuracy and exact correlation of the two data sets gives reasons to be cautious. Capital Economics explains that this scepticism is doubled every January, because firms tend to purge names from the payroll at the start of the year – even though those people may not have done any paid work for that firm for several months. “That distortion occasionally used to generate very weak readings at the start of the year but, in this case, it looks like the ADP could have over-compensated with an adjustment,” CapEco says. Meanwhile, the ADP itself suggested that mild winter weather provided a significant boost to the January employment gain, and adds that underlying job growth is close to +125k monthly pace, which is consistent with low and stable unemployment.
BUSINESS SURVEYS:
The manufacturing ISM report in January noted that labour was reported to be in short supply, and panellist comments were generally positive regarding future employment potential. The manufacturing employment sub-index, however, rose to 46.6 from December’s 45.2. Meanwhile, the non-manufacturing ISM report saw the employment sub-component fall a touch to 53.1 from a revised down 54.8; the non-manufacturing gauge also noted that respondents continued to have difficulty with labour resources, and was impacting capacity and pushing up costs.
CONSUMER CONFIDENCE:
The Street expects the jobless rate to remain at 3.5%, a rate which the Fed’s January projections had penciled in for the end of 2020. In terms of wage growth, the Street looks for a pick-up to 0.3% M/M in January from a pace of 0.1% in December, while the Y/Y rate is seen rising to 3.0% in January after falling to 2.9% (from 3.1%) in December. Within the Conference Board’s consumer confidence report, the differential between jobs ‘plentiful’ and jobs ‘hard to get’ rose sharply to 37.4 in Jan (prev. 33.9 in December, and 31.6 in November), which bodes well for the jobless rate. Additionally, consumers’ outlook for the labour market was also more upbeat, with the proportion expecting more jobs in the months ahead increased from 15.5 to 17.2, while those anticipating fewer jobs declined from 13.9 to 13.4. And regarding their short-term income prospects, there was a small decline in consumers expectations, from 22.7 to 22.0 percent, while the proportion expecting a decrease was virtually unchanged at 7.7.
JOB CUTS:
January Challenger job cuts jumped to 67,735, the highest monthly total since February 2019, and rising from 32,843 in the previous report. Challenger said that technology companies led in announced job cuts last month as they pivot to new products or services. But Tech was not the only industry embarking on this kind of restructuring. Companies across all industries are re-examining their hierarchies, particularly in Automotive and Retail, where innovations in technology are changing the landscape
ARGUING FOR A STRONGER REPORT:
- Jobless claims. Initial jobless claims decreased in the five weeks between the payroll reference periods, averaging 218k (vs. 226k in the December payroll month). Continuing claims declined 20k from survey week to survey week, this likely understates the improvement given the winter seasonal bias: Goldman’s model predicted a ~100k rebound in continuing claims this winter, even if underlying labor market conditions remain stable. Overall, jobless claims data remain consistent with a subdued pace of layoff activity.
- Winter weather. Unseasonably dry weather in the Northeast and Ohio Valley likely boosted job growth in tomorrow’s report. While a population-weighted snowfall dataset was slightly above average over the survey week as a whole, this reflected snowstorms on Saturday that were probably too late to significantly affect the report (workers are counted as employed as long as they work at least one hour during the reference period). As shown in Exhibit 1, snowfall in the Northeast and Midwest was negligible (on average) from Monday to Friday of the survey week and was also quite modest in the prior week. Previous such instances coincided with strong or very strong January job growth (+355k in 2012, +195k in 2013, and +312k in 2019). While the impact is uncertain, a weather boost of 20k-30k in the January report is possible.
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- Labor market slack. With the labor market somewhat beyond full employment, the dwindling availability of workers is a factor weighing on job growth this year. However, as shown in Exhibit 2, first-print January job growth tends to be strong when the labor market is tight—for example in 1989, 1997-2000, 2006, and in two of the last three years. Labor supply constraints likely led firms to implement fewer end-of-year layoffs in these instances (anticipating a shortage of applicants in the coming year).
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- ADP. The payroll-processing firm ADP reported a 291k increase in January private employment, 134k above consensus and also 134k above the +157k average pace of the previous three months. While the inputs to the ADP model argued for a solid reading, the strength was larger than expected, consistent with a solid underlying pace of employment growth and a strong reading tomorrow.
ARGUING FOR A WEAKER REPORT:
- Employer surveys. Business activity surveys were firm on net in January, and while the employment components exhibited similar patterns, with improvement in the manufacturing sector (tracker +0.9pt to 52.9) there was a slight decline in the much larger nonmanufacturing sector (tracker -0.3pt to 52.7, see composite in Exhibit 3). Service-sector job growth was +140k in December and averaged 164k over the last six months, while manufacturing payroll employment declined by 12k in December and has averaged +2k over the last six months.
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- Job cuts. Announced layoffs reported by Challenger, Gray & Christmas increased by 15k in January to 53k (SA by GS), and were 12k above their January 2019 level. The month-over-month rise was driven by increases in announced layoffs in the technology sector (+11k) industry
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/06/2020 – 22:31 - The Height Of Idiocy
The Height Of Idiocy
Authored by Doug Casey via InternationalMan.com,
“The only element in the universe more common than hydrogen is stupidity.”
– Einstein
I’m not a fortune teller. In fact, the only things anybody knows about predicting – even if you gussy the concept up by calling it “forecasting” – are 1.) Predict often and 2.) Never give both the time and the event.
The worst offenders are those who pretend they know where the economy’s headed.
Statistics – so often the basis of conjecture with regard to the economy – are so subject to interpretation, and so easy to take out of context, that most of the time they’re best used as fodder for cocktail party conversations.
Still, as potentially wrong-headed and tendentious as the subject is, “the economy” is occasionally worth talking about simply to establish a clear point of view.
In fact, I place the phrase “the economy” in quotes because I don’t even accept the validity of the concept, nor that of “the GDP”; they’re both chimeras.
The idea of GDP gives the impression that it is not individuals that produce goods and services, but rather a machine called “the economy.” This leaves the door open to all manner of nonsense, like the assertion that what may be good for individuals may not be good for the economy, and vice-versa.
For instance, an advance in the GDP doesn’t necessarily mean increased prosperity: What if the government embarked on a massive pyramid building program, an archetypical example of public works? GDP might rise, but it would add absolutely nothing to the well-being of individuals. To the contrary, the building of the pyramid would only divert capital from wealth-generating activities.
On the other hand, if a scientific breakthrough was made which cut energy consumption by 80% for the same net output, or magically eliminated all disease, the GDP would collapse because it would bankrupt the energy and health industries.
But people would be vastly better off.
Entirely apart from that, the whole idea of GDP gives the impression that there actually is such a thing as the national output.
In the real world, however, wealth is produced by someone and belongs to somebody. We’re not ants or bees working for the hive. The whole idea of a GDP just allows the “authorities” to bamboozle people into believing they can actually control “the economy,” as if it were some giant machine.
The officials pretend to be the Wizard of Oz, and Boobus americanus is trained to think they’re omniscient. Thus whenever the rate of growth slips “too low,” officials are expected to give “the economy” a suitable push. Conversely, whenever “the economy” is growing too fast, the officials are supposed to step in to “cool” it.
It’s all an embarrassing and destructive charade.
Nonetheless…
I remain of the opinion that we’re headed into the biggest economic smashup in history.
That’s an outrageous statement, and it’s always dangerous to say something like that. After all, the longest trend in motion is the Ascent of Man, and that trend is unlikely to change; indeed, it’s likely to accelerate. And it’s usually a mistake to bet against an established trend.
Furthermore, science and technology will continue advancing, people will continue working and saving, entrepreneurs will continue to create. And downturns in the economy have always been brief. There’s a good case for staying bullish.
Even most of those who talk of a recession tend to write it off as either a simple reversal of recent “irrational exuberance,” or a passing change in people’s psychology, or a temporary shock. Unfortunately, it goes much deeper than that. Those things have very little to do with what recessions are all about.
A recession, according to the conventional parlance, is a period when economic activity declines for two or more quarters. That’s a description of what happens, but it’s really not very helpful, much like saying a fever is a period during which your temperature is above 98.6 F. A better definition of a fever might be a period when the body’s temperature is elevated as a consequence of fighting an infection, in that it gives you some insight into the cause as well as the effect.
That’s why I prefer to say a recession is “a period of time when distortions and misallocations of capital caused by the business cycle are liquidated.”
What causes the business cycle? Excess creation of credit by a central bank (e.g., the Fed). The injection of artificially created money and credit into a country’s economy gives both producers and consumers false signals, causing them to do things which they otherwise would not do. The longer the upswing of a business cycle continues, the longer and more severe the down cycle will be.
A depression is just a really bad recession.
One thing that – contrary to popular opinion – can help get an economy out of a recession is a large pool of savings; savings give people the money to invest in new production, as well as the money to buy that production.
That’s why it’s the height of idiocy for pundits to talk about how patriotic it is to go out and shop. It can only deplete the capital that will be needed in the future, and deepen the bottom with more bankruptcies, stealing consumption from the future.
That’s why the Fed’s artificially low interest rates is such a bad idea; it encourages people to save less and borrow more. This engineered decline may well, after a certain lag time, cause a cyclical upturn – but it will only aggravate the underlying problem, guaranteeing yet a bigger bust.
This isn’t just an American problem, because the U.S. is truly the engine of the world’s economy. But a lot of the drive behind the engine is the gigantic trade deficit. The hundreds of billions the U.S. sent abroad in the last year alone, after over a decade of increasing deficits, has caused a lot of capital investment that will become uneconomic, and created a lot of economic activity that will come to a screeching halt when that deficit inevitably reverses.
The whole world is levered on what happens in the U.S.
The effect in economies around the world will be devastating. The Smoot Hawley tariff of 1930, which acted to collapse world trade, greatly exacerbated the last depression. It could be that economic conditions in the U.S. alone could do it this time, without the overt “assistance” of the government.
I don’t believe we’re looking at just another cyclical downturn this time. We could be – but I don’t think so.
Of course, since the dollar is by far the biggest market in the world, constituting the reserves of almost every government on the planet, the de facto currency of probably 50 countries, and the savings of hundreds of millions of people around the world, when it collapses, it will cause a financial earthquake, Magnitude 10.
Use any rallies as selling opportunities. Diversify your assets out of the U.S. Build a good position in gold. Buy gold stocks with speculative capital. Get your debt, if any, down to comfortable levels.
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Unfortunately there’s little any individual can practically do to change the trajectory of this trend in motion. The best you can and should do is to stay informed so that you can protect yourself in the best way possible, and even profit from the situation. That’s exactly why New York Times bestselling author Doug Casey and his team just released an urgent new report titled Doug Casey’s Top 7 Predictions for the Raging 2020s.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/06/2020 – 21:55 - Trump Announces Leader Of Al-Qaeda In Yemen Killed By US Drone Strike
Trump Announces Leader Of Al-Qaeda In Yemen Killed By US Drone Strike
Thursday evening President Trump announced the death of al-Qaeda’s chief in Yemen by a US drone strike. The New York Times first reported last week the likely death of Qasim al-Rimi, the founder and leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in a US airstrike, which the president has now confirmed. Days ago Saudi media also began reporting his death.
“Under Rimi, AQAP committed unconscionable violence against civilians in Yemen and sought to conduct and inspire numerous attacks against the United States and our forces,” Trump said in a White House official statement. “His death further degrades AQAP and the global al-Qa’ida movement, and it brings us closer to eliminating the threats these groups pose to our national security.”
Qasim Al-Rimi The successful counter-terror operation also reportedly killed an unspecified deputy of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. This other top al-Qaeda operative’s name was not immediately given.
The State Department had issued a $10 million reward for information leading to Rimi’s capture. Interestingly, he’s alleged to have directly threatened attack on President Trump.
According to the Rewards for Justice statement:
On February 5, 2017, al-Rimi released an audiotape in which he threatened U.S. President Donald Trump. In a May 7, 2017 video, he urged supporters living in Western countries to conduct “easy and simple” attacks and praised Omar Mateen, who killed 49 people in a June 2016 mass shooting at a nightclub in Orlando Florida.
US intelligence had also linked him to a 2008 attack on the US Embassy in Yemen, and to the 2009 “underwear bomber” plot to blow up a US-bound airliner.
The State Department’s brief bio information indicates Rimi was active in Sunni jihadist activities and leadership going back to the 1990’s:
Qasim al-Rimi was named emir of AQAP in June 2015, immediately after he swore allegiance to al-Qa’ida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri and called for renewed attacks against the United States. Al-Rimi trained terrorists at an al-Qa’ida camp in Afghanistan in the 1990’s, and subsequently returned to Yemen and became an AQAP military commander.
His death marks the third designated terrorist killed by the US in recent months, following IRGC Quds Force chief Qassem Soleimani and more significantly ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
According to CNN, Rimi had long been at the top of Trump’s list of desired kills or captures: “Rimi was a target of a January 2017 raid on an al Qaeda compound in Yemen that led to the first US military combat death under the President, a senior US military official told CNN at the time.”
US Reaper drone file image, via Reuters. Days after the raid Rimi had released an audio message calling Trump “the new fool of the White House received a painful slap across his face.”
But clearly it’s America’s Commander-in-Chief who had the last laugh.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/06/2020 – 21:35 - Apparently All White Males Are Mindless Automatons
Apparently All White Males Are Mindless Automatons
Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,
Recently the prominent investment bank Goldman Sachs announced that they would no longer work with companies whose Boards of Directors consisted exclusively of white males.
Specifically the bank will immediately require prospective clients to have at least one female or one non-white individual, on the Board of Directors. And by 2021, a company would need at least two ‘diverse’ directors, otherwise Goldman Sachs will refuse to underwrite that company’s Initial Public Offering.
(Obviously this doesn’t apply to Chinese or Middle Eastern companies; Goldman Sachs is happy to continue selling its soul to non-diverse companies in those parts of the world.)
But Goldman is just the latest bank to make this announcement.
BlackRock and State Street Global Advisors, two of the largest asset managers in the world, also recently stated that they would vote against directors at the companies in which they are shareholders, unless those Boards have at least one female member.
Everything about this is remarkably stupid.
In the case of BlackRock and State Street, there are literally ZERO companies in the S&P 500 anymore that have all-male boards. None. And a recent Harvard study showed that 80% of large-cap companies have at least two female directors, if not more.
So their supposedly bold proclamation is completely pointless, except to demonstrate their ‘wokeness’ to Millennials.
More importantly, though, it highlights a major revolution in capitalism itself.
Business and capitalism should be the ultimate meritocracy. Talent rises to the top. Mediocrity stagnates. And poor performance washes out.
But talent has no gender. It has no ethnicity. It has no sexual orientation.
Talent is measured by how well you can accomplish the mission and lead an organization to greater achievements.
This is what’s supposed to matter. And the shareholders (i.e. the OWNERS) of a business are supposed to elect their representatives to the Board of Directors based on this critical factor.
It shouldn’t matter if the entire board is white males, trans women of color, benevolent space aliens, or people who identify as seedless watermelons. Those shouldn’t even be factors.
I serve on a number of boards– including large companies that I’ve started, non-profits, and one company that’s traded on a major stock exchange.
Some of the best directors I’ve ever served with are women. And good thing, because I picked them myself.
But I didn’t pick them because they’re women. That would be a horrible insult to them. I picked them because they’re seriously freaking talented… which is the only reason that matters.
The common refrain among social justice warriors is that ‘diverse boards make better decisions because they come from different backgrounds, and the companies are better off for it.’
This is such a dumb thing to say. It presupposes that all white males are robotic automatons who think in exactly the same way. What a bunch of bullshit.
Moreover, Stanford University published an analysis last year of 11 different academic studies concluding that “evidence on board diversity and corporate outcomes is highly mixed.”
In other words, there is no conclusive evidence that diverse boards create better companies.
But these social justice warriors, and the companies like Goldman, State Street, and Black Rock that bow to the pressure, are happy to ignore facts and data.
And even if it were true that diversity somehow makes better Boards, why stop at gender and race?
If you believe that it’s better to have people with different perspectives, then why not demand that every board also include someone who is physically disabled? Or someone who served in a combat zone? Or someone of a smaller religion or political affiliation?
I imagine that a blind gay vegan veteran Wiccan probably has a unique perspective. So why not demand one of those on every Board?
Because that would be ridiculous, right? Of course. But that’s what this entire movement is– ridiculous.
Capitalism is responsible for the greatest and widest level of prosperity in the history of the world. Without the free market we would still be Medieval serfs. Capitalism is not perfect, but it works. And it has a hell of a track record.
But these whacktivists are trying to replace the critical fundamentals of capitalism which drive prosperity (like talent) with a ridiculous value system that has no factual basis whatsoever.
And they’re winning…
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And to continue learning how to ensure you thrive no matter what happens next in the world, I encourage you to download our free Perfect Plan B Guide.
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Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/06/2020 – 21:15 - Coronavirus Triggers "Biggest Shock" To Oil Markets Since Lehman Crisis
Coronavirus Triggers “Biggest Shock” To Oil Markets Since Lehman Crisis
Update: The Telegraph’s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard warned that the collapse in Chinese oil consumption is “the biggest shock to oil markets since the Lehman crisis.”
Evans-Pritchard said the plunge in consumption could be between three to four million barrels per day, adding that this amount is twice UK’s North Sea oil output.
We noted earlier (see below), OPEC+ couldn’t come to an agreement on Thursday about future production cuts ahead of the big meeting next month.
“It’s now clear that coronavirus is a serious event risk to the entire world and that financial conditions are tightening very quickly,” said Edward Harrison from Credit Writedowns.
Harrison said financial contagion has spread from commodity prices, as we pointed out Sunday, the start of the bear market for crude, and stretched into US junk bonds. “High yield is where the rubber hits the road,” he said.
Evans-Pritchard said two-thirds of China’s economy is offline, which is the main reason for the consumption plunge, as the country shuts down industrial hubs to contain the virus outbreak.
Corporate bonds are one financial crisis away from wreaking havoc on the global financial system. The ratio of junk bonds with debt-to-earnings ratios above six has approached 30%, above levels right before the 2008 financial crash.
Investment-grade securities rated BBB or lower have increased by at least fivefold from the depths of the last recession. It will only take one accident to trigger a cascade of downgrades pushing hundreds of billions of investment-grade bonds into junk, setting off a fire-sale that would make the 2008 financial crisis look like child’s play.
Plunging commodities, such as crude and copper, are suggesting that China’s economy has created a global shock that has first severed complex chains and could tilt the world into recession.
* * *
Oil futures remain in a bear market following the collapse in oil demand from China amid two-thirds of its economy shutdown following the coronavirus outbreak.
Crude rallied Wednesday on inventory builds, mostly on the hope that the OPEC+ meeting would lead to cuts. However, any gains that were seen are being quickly erased as of Thursday morning.
This forced the OPEC+ technical committee to meet in Vienna, Austria, for a third day this week, to discuss the importance of slashing oil output by at least 500,000 barrels per day (bpd), reported Reuters.
The Joint Technical Committee (JTC) is an advising body of OPEC and Russia, known as OPEC+.
As of Thursday, there’s no firm decision by the technical committee to cut oil production. This is because Russia has opposed to cuts and said it would be willing to agree on an extension of current cuts.
Ransquawk reports that the meeting has officially ended without a planned resolution of production cuts.
The technical committee meeting comes ahead of a planned OPEC+ conference on March 5-6.
OPEC+ has already agreed in December to remove 1.7 million bpd from markets in response to a slowing global economy. Now the deadly virus outbreak has created a “shock” in the global economy as China’s economy grinds to a halt. The country is the largest importer of crude in the world, suggesting that demand has collapsed, and oil prices will plunge deeper if supply isn’t curbed.
Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said on Tuesday that he wasn’t sure if it was time to tighten output further.
BP CFO Brian Gilvary warned Tuesday that the virus outbreak has reduced 2020 global demand growth by 300,000-500,000 bpd, or about 0.5%.
OPEC will have to cut at least 500,000 barrels a day in order to offset the coronavirus’ impact on energy demand, this analyst says. https://t.co/BoD4IiqHjJ pic.twitter.com/MK1odRhclg
— CNBC International (@CNBCi) February 6, 2020
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Gilvary said the global economy is expected to weaken because of the developments in China.
Energy to industrial metal futures contracts have plunged in the last several weeks, as commodity traders sell first and ask questions later.
“The magnitude of the demand shock that we’re seeing is on par with 2008 to 2009” financial crisis, Jeffrey Currie, global head of commodities at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., said in a Bloomberg television interview. During that slump, prices fell from above $140 a barrel down into the $30s.
Commodity supply chains in China and across the world have already been disrupted. China told Chile on Wednesday to defer cargoes of copper. Crude oil and liquefied natural gas to China slumped this week to near zero.
The virus outbreak in China has led to the creeping economic paralysis that risks a hard landing. Industrial activity has collapsed, and the proposed opening of factories early next week is being pushed out even further. This would certainly create supply chain shocks that will be felt around the world.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/06/2020 – 20:55 - Johnstone: The Myth Of Incompetence – DNC Scandals Are A Feature, Not A Bug
Johnstone: The Myth Of Incompetence – DNC Scandals Are A Feature, Not A Bug
Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,
The Iowa caucus scandal has continued to get more egregious by the hour, with new revelations routinely pouring in about extremely suspicious manipulations taking place which all just so happen to disadvantage the campaign of Bernie Sanders in the first Democratic electoral contest of 2020. By the time you read this article, there will likely have been more.
Following the failure of an extremely shady app developed by vocally anti-Sanders establishment insiders which reportedly was literally altering vote count numbers after they were entered, Black Hawk County supervisor Chris Schwartz shared the election results in his county on Facebook so the public could have some idea of what’s going on as the Iowa Democratic Party (IDP) slowly trickles out the results of the caucuses.
Uhhhhhhhh the IDP is now reporting vote totals from Black Hawk County that are at odds with what Black Hawk County themselves have reported pic.twitter.com/nbLa6mSuvO
— Bernie Won (@lib_crusher) February 5, 2020
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Sanders supporters quickly highlighted the fact that the IDP’s reported numbers for Black Hawk County were wildly different from those reported by Schwartz, with votes taken from Sanders and given to minor fringe candidates Deval Patrick and Tom Steyer. The IDP then announced that it would be making “a minor correction to the last batch of results”, which just so happened to be in Black Hawk County and just so happened to give Sanders back some votes (but still remains different from that reported by Schwartz).
It’s probable that this only happened as a result of one Black Hawk County supervisor taking to social media to report the vote tallies for this one particular county. What about all the Iowa locations where this did not happen and local Democratic Party officials didn’t report their numbers on social media? Does anyone actually believe that the one instance where the IDP got caught is the one instance in which such vote tampering occurred?
That would be a very silly belief to hold, in my opinion. It would be like a store clerk discovering that a can of beans is completely rotten, then going ahead and putting the rest of the pallet on the shelf under the assumption that the other cans are fine.
Another of the countless revelations hemorrhaging from this fustercluck is a report from CNN and The New York Post that the DNC, not the IDP, is “running the show” in managing the Iowa caucus scandal. This means that this Democratic presidential primary scandal is being managed by the same committee which orchestrated the last Democratic presidential primary scandal, and that the campaign being victimized by this scandal, that of Bernie Sanders, is the same in both cases.
This would be the same DNC whose chairperson, Tom Perez, recently stacked its nominating committee with dozens of odious alt-centrist establishment insiders who are ideologically opposed to Sanders in every meaningful way.
“Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez has nominated dozens of lobbyists, corporate consultants, think tank board members, and former officials linked to the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton to serve on the Democratic National Convention (DNC) nominating committee this July,” Kevin Gosztola reported for Grayzone last month. “Many of Perez’s nominees are vocal opponents of Senator Bernie Sanders and spoke out against his campaign when he challenged Hillary Clinton for the nomination in 2016.”
THERE YOU HAVE IT….@cnn just reported the @DNC is “running the show” on the release and handling of the #IowaCaucus results.
It now makes perfect sense why results have been released this way…which just so happened to make @PeteButtigieg look like the winner for 2 days https://t.co/wbU3MoGQbu
— Jordan (@JordanChariton) February 5, 2020
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As these scandalous revelations continue to emerge I don’t see anyone online expressing surprise that the Democratic establishment is once again stacking the deck against Sanders, but I do see some people expressing surprise that they are being so brazen about it. Which is perfectly understandable; if this party wants to screw over progressive voters, you’d expect that they’d at least try to hide it a little bit so they don’t alienate their progressive base before November.
The flaw in this expectation is its premise that Democratic Party elites care if their party wins in November. They do not.
Put yourself in the shoes of one of the leading movers and shakers within the Democratic Party for a minute. Pretend you’re getting a nice paycheck, pretend you’re getting great healthcare benefits, pretend you get plenty of prestige and exclusive access and invitations to classy parties. And pretend you’re the type of person who’s willing to manipulate and deceive and kiss up and kick down and do whatever it takes to get to the top of such a structure.
Now ask yourself, if you were such a person in such a situation, would you care if voters pick Donald Trump or Pete Buttigeig in November? Would it affect your cushy lifestyle in any way whatsoever? Would you lose your job, your prestige or your influence? No party elites lost those things in 2016. Why would you expect this time to be any different?
But you might be at risk of losing your cushy lifestyle if a forcefully anti-elitist progressive movement gets off the ground and takes control of your party. So you’d stand everything to gain by doing everything you can to prevent that from happening, and, because you don’t care if Trump gets re-elected, you’d stand absolutely nothing to lose.
These people do not care if Trump gets re-elected, because they lose nothing if he does. The only people who stand anything to lose are the ordinary citizens who are suffering under a corrupt status quo of soul-crushing neoliberalism and increasing authoritarianism, many of whom currently support Sanders. Democratic Party elites are perfectly happy to keep shrieking about Russia for another four years while making sure that the status quo which rewards their manipulative behavior remains intact, and ensuring that they never wind up like those poor suckers out there who are suffering from poverty and lack of healthcare.
And everything I just said is equally true of the media class who are currently working in conjunction with the DNC’s shenanigans to spin Pete Buttigeig as the clear winner of the party’s first presidential electoral contest. They enjoy all the same perks, and move in many of the same circles, as Democratic Party elites, and it’s all conditioned on their protection of the status quo.
How Corporate Media Make Pete Look Like He’s Winning https://t.co/sMvwWVkop9 pic.twitter.com/2pSjd3Cm3z
— FAIR (@FAIRmediawatch) February 6, 2020
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I keep seeing the word “incompetence” thrown around. “Gosh these Democratic Party leaders are so incompetent!”, they say. “How can anyone be so bad at their job?”
Well, they are not bad at their job. They are very, very good at their job. It’s just that their job isn’t what most people assume it is.
Their job is not to win elections and garner public support, their job is to ensure the perpetuation of the status quo which rewards them so handsomely for their malignant behavior. Toward this end they are not incompetent at all. They know exactly what they’re doing, and they’re doing it well.
They are extremely competent. Depraved, certainly. Sociopathic, possibly. But not incompetent.
They’re happy to make their nefariousness look like incompetence though, whenever they can get away with it. Any manipulator worth their salt always will be. If they can make their planned, deliberate acts of sabotage look like innocent little oopsies, they’ll gladly do so. But you learn in life that whenever you see someone making a lot of “mistakes” which just so happen to benefit them every time, you’re dealing with manipulation, not incompetence.
What do the bad guys say in the movies when they order someone’s murder? They say “Make it look like an accident.” If it’s an accident you’ve got no trouble. You won’t be seen for what you are.
But of course it’s no accident, and anyone with clear eyes and good intentions sees this. If you see someone working hard to make you believe that it’s incompetence, you are dealing with someone who is invested in maintaining the status quo in some way. You are being manipulated.
The system isn’t broken. It’s working exactly the way it’s intended to work. It ain’t a bug, it’s a feature. And that feature will remain in operation until the entire sick system is torn down and replaced with something healthy.
* * *
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Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/06/2020 – 20:35 - FBI, DOJ Say China Is America's Greatest Threat
FBI, DOJ Say China Is America’s Greatest Threat
FBI Director Christopher Wray on Thursday said that Chinese technology theft is rampant, and that “no country poses a greater threat than Communist China” right now, according to Reuters.
“As I stand here talking with you today, the FBI has about 1,000 investigations involving China’s attempted theft of U.S.-based technology in all 56 of our field offices and spanning just about every industry sector,” Wray told conference attendees at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
Wray noted China’s aggressive push to exploit US academic openness to use “campus proxies” for the theft of technology, as well as establishing “institutes on our campuses.”
Attorney General William Barr also spoke at the conference, saying that China is now America’s “top geopolitical adversary,” pointing to Beijing’s emerging dominance in next-generation 5g telecommunications technology.
“China has stolen a march and is now leading in 5G,” said Barr, adding “They have already captured 40 percent of the market and are now aggressively pursuing the balance.”
The FBI data shows an aggressively stepped-up campaign by U.S. authorities to root out Chinese espionage operations pursuing American secrets. This has snared a growing group of Chinese government officials, business people, and academics.
In 2019 alone, public records show U.S. authorities arrested and expelled two Chinese diplomats who allegedly drove onto a military base in Virginia. They also caught and jailed former CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency officials on espionage charges linked to China.
China’s efforts to steal unclassified American technology, ranging from military secrets to medical research, have long been thought to be extensive and aggressive. But U.S. officials launched a broad effort to stop alleged Chinese espionage in the United States only in 2018. –Reuters
China rejects the accusations, with their Washington embassy calling them “entirely baseless.”
“The people-to-people exchange between China and the US is conducive to stronger understanding between the two peoples and serves the fundamental interests of our two countries,” it told Reuters in an emailed statement.
That said, CSIS has noted 137 publicly-reported cases of Chinese-linked espionage against the USA since 2000, of which 73% took place in the last decade. The data shows that military and commercial technologies are the most common targets of theft.
Another heavily targeted industry is medical research.
In the area of medical research, of 180 investigations of misuse of National Institutes of Health funds, diversion of research intellectual property and inappropriate sharing of confidential information, more than 90% of the cases have links to China, according to an NIH spokeswoman. –Reuters
According to CSIS expert James Lewis, “China depends on Western technology and as licit avenues are closed, they turn to espionage to get access.”
Reuters notes that in January alone, “federal prosecutors in Boston announced three criminal cases involving industrial spying or stealing, including charges against a Harvard department chair.”
Prosecutors said Harvard’s Charles Lieber lied to the Pentagon and the NIH about his involvement in the Thousand Talents Plan: a Chinese government program that offers mainly Chinese scientists working overseas lavish financial incentives to bring their expertise and knowledge back to China. They said he also lied about his affiliation with China’s Wuhan University of Technology.
During at least part of the time he had ties to the Chinese university, Lieber was also a “principal investigator” working on at least six research projects funded by U.S. Defense Department agencies, court documents show.
We note that nothing was said about launch codes.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/06/2020 – 20:15 - Mish Exposes WHO's Historical Controversies
Mish Exposes WHO’s Historical Controversies
Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk,
The World Health Organization has been involved in a number of controversies over the years. Let’s take a look.
Given the WHO’s praise of China and condemnation of other countries I thought it might be interesting to take a look historically at the WHO.
WHO Controversies
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West Nile Experiments: A field experiment in the West Nile district allowed researchers to take blood from children 3 times a day, in order to allegedly study an local disease causing mononucleosis. It has been alleged they were actually being infected with contaminated polio vaccines and their antibodies were being studied. Around 45,000 were tested from 1960-1973.
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Ebola and HIV Experimentation: It has been alleged that the WHO was aware of a Dr. Hilary Koprowski, a doctor allegedly performing research on AIDS and Ebola by deceiving and infecting Africans with a faux polio vaccine. It was estimated that over a million Africans were infected from 1954-1957. However, his work having been the cause of any disease has been refuted.
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2013–2016 Ebola outbreak: Following the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the organization was heavily criticized for its bureaucracy, insufficient financing, regional structure, and staffing profile.
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International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) controversies: The World Health Organization sub-department, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), has been criticized for the way it analyses the tendency of certain substances and activities to cause cancer and for having a politically motivated bias when it selects studies for its analysis. Ed Yong, a British science journalist, has criticized the agency and its “confusing” category system for misleading the public. Marcel Kuntz, a French director of research at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, criticized the agency for its classification of potentially carcinogenic substances. He claimed that this classification did not take into account the extent of exposure: for example, red meat is qualified as probably carcinogenic, but the quantity of consumed red meat at which it could become dangerous is not specified.[147]
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IARC Cell Phones: Controversies have erupted multiple times when the IARC has classified many things as Class 2a (probable carcinogens) or 2b (possible carcinogen), including cell phone signals, glyphosate, drinking hot beverages, and working as a barber.
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Robert Mugabe’s role as a goodwill ambassador: On 21 October 2017, the Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus appointed former Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe as a WHO Goodwill Ambassador to help promote the fight against non-communicable diseases. The appointment address praised Mugabe for his commitment to public health in Zimbabwe. The appointment attracted widespread condemnation and criticism in WHO member states and international organizations due to Robert Mugabe’s poor record on human rights and presiding over a decline in Zimbabwe’s public health. Due to the outcry, the following day the appointment was revoked.
I compiled the above list from Wikipedia. There were more, but those looked like the most serious charges.
Looks Like a Pandemic
— Jim Bianco (@biancoresearch) February 2, 2020
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But hey, the WHO officials say it isn’t.
Moreover, the WHO has praised China’s strong quarantine approach and allegedly honest reporting while condemning the US and other countries for banning flights.
The WHO is a SPOS. The first “S” stands for sorry. You can work out the rest.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/06/2020 – 19:55 -
- Futures, Yuan Tumble After Japan Finds Another 42 Virus Cases On Quarantine Cruise Ship
Futures, Yuan Tumble After Japan Finds Another 42 Virus Cases On Quarantine Cruise Ship
Just when you thought it was safe to buy the f**king record high melt-up, TBS News reports that Japanese authorities have found another 42 people on the Diamond Princess cruise ship anchored in Yokohama have tested positive for Coronavirus.
【速報】横浜に停泊中のクルーズ船内に新たに４１人の新型コロナ感染者 厚労省 #指定感染症 #感染症 #新型コロナウイルス pic.twitter.com/nnFZAnSQnb
— TBS NEWS (@tbs_news) February 7, 2020
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Japan says 273 people on the cruise ship were tested and 61 were found positive, and the 41 new patients have been sent to hospitals in 5 separate prefectures.
Dow futures are down around 100 points on the headline…
And Yuan is weakening on the news…
With The Olympics only a few months away, this must be a full panic for Japanese authorities to ensure it does not escape that ship.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/06/2020 – 19:51 - Here It Is: One Bank Finally Explains How The Fed's Balance Sheet Expansion Pushes Stocks Higher
Here It Is: One Bank Finally Explains How The Fed’s Balance Sheet Expansion Pushes Stocks Higher
One month ago, in a bizarre attempt to mock “QE Conspiracists” such as his current colleague and former Goldman co-worker Robert Kaplan, Trump’s chief economist Larry Kudlow and Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman – Minneapolis Fed president and 2020 FOMC voter Neel Kashkari, also known as “Chump” for his role in arranging a bailout of his former employer Goldman Sachs alongside all US commercial banks and sticking the US taxpayers with the bill, asked “someone” to explain to him “how swapping one short term risk free instrument (reserves) for another short term risk free instrument (t-bills) leads to equity repricing.”
QE conspiracists can say this is all about balance sheet growth. Someone explain how swapping one short term risk free instrument (reserves) for another short term risk free instrument (t-bills) leads to equity repricing. I don’t see it. /end
— Neel Kashkari (@neelkashkari) January 17, 2020
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To help the confused Kashkari, we did just that using examples from none other than his own regulator, the Bank of International Settlements, although he appears not to have understood anything we said, because just a few days later, his former Fed and Goldman colleague, Bill Dudley, echoed Kashkari and confirmed he has no clue how monetary policy actually operates, when he wrote that the Fed’s balance sheet expansion has no effect on the stock market (we wonder if a prerequisite for working at Goldman Sachs is the complete inability to grasp how financial and monetary plumbing actually operates).
In any case, just because a couple of Fed hacks and their assorted croneys fail to grasp how monetary policy works, or are unable to comprehend what we wrote in “The Fed Was Suddenly Facing Multiple LTCMs”: BIS Offers A Stunning Explanation Of What Really Happened On Repocalypse Day“, doesn’t mean that all financial professionals are in the same boat. And sure enough, overnight SMBC Nikko’s Masao Muraki, formerly one of Deutsche Bank’s most respected strategists, has written the definitive report paraphrasing everything we have said over the past ten years on this topic in easy to comprehend – even for career economists, twitter “finance professionals” and, yes, central bankers – report, titled “Fed & Investment Bank Balance Sheet Expansion: Lifeline for Leveraged Funds” in which Muraki writes “we have no doubt there exists a mechanism by which the impact of Fed money market liquidity supply operations is transmitted to long-term rates and risk premia. First, the Fed’s balance sheet expansion likely helped reassure equity and credit market investors, indirectly impacting prices in those markets. Second, without the Fed’s liquidity injection, there was a risk Japanese financial institutions and leveraged funds, which undertake massive dollar fundraising in money markets, could have sold off long-term bonds and credit product holdings.”
Since have written on this topic over and over and over, and frankly are now tired of addressing an audience that is either mentally handicapped, or its paycheck depends on simply being unable to grasp what is actually going on, we will pull the main highlights from Muraki’s report which we urge anyone who has an even passing interest in how the Fed really manipulates markets, to read.
Today’s content is about the mechanism the markets haven’t quite recognized yet. I have been monitoring entities that undertake massive dollar fundraising through repos and derivatives in money markets and invest in long-term bonds and risk assets, such as leveraged funds and banks and lifers.
Excessive risk-taking activities of those players could have possibly been one of the causes of the interest rate spike in money markets. This suggests once the Fed decreases the liquidity injection, their leverage level would no longer be maintained and therefore they could sell off long-term bonds and risk asset holdings
This also explains why Bill Dudley was so eager to “explain” why the Fed’s tapering of QE4 won’t have an impact on markets – precisely because it will. But back to Muraki:
Costs & benefits of Fed balance sheet expansion
Impact of Fed liquidity on risk asset prices
We have no doubt there exists a mechanism by which the impact of Fed money market liquidity supply operations is transmitted to long-term rates and risk premia. First, the Fed’s balance sheet expansion likely helped reassure equity and credit market investors, indirectly impacting prices in those markets. Second, without the Fed’s liquidity injection, there was a risk that leveraged funds and Japanese financial institutions, which undertake massive dollar fundraising in money markets, could have sold off long-term bonds and credit product holdings.
Key indicators for gauging Fed balance sheet policy
The Fed likely faces a difficult choice when weighing the costs and benefits of liquidity supply operations (and the associated balance sheet expansion). We will monitor the following three factors, which we think the Fed looks to in determining policy. The outlook for liquidity (especially non-reserve liability; Figure 6)…
… volatility and tightening in money markets (Figure 7)….
… and the side effects on risk asset prices (Figure 8).
Consequences of dollar liquidity shortage
Dollar crunch in money markets
Apart from seasonality (timing of tax payments, etc), we think the surge in repo rates reflected the following structural changes.
1) Decrease in liquidity owing to monetary policy (Fed balance sheet tapering), 2) decrease in liquidity owing to financial regulations like liquidity regulations (LCR), liquidity stress tests (CLAR), recovery & resolution plans (RRP), and money market fund (MMF) reforms, 3) increased demand for liquidity owing to the stepped-up hunt for yield.
Risk-taking by leveraged funds and Japanese financial institutions
Regarding point 3 above, amid the climate of falling interest rates and credit spreads, the hunt for yield has spurred activity in the “carry trade” (Note 2), ie investing short-term money in long-term bonds in order to make money on long-short interest rate differentials (incl non-liquidity premium/term spread). The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has highlighted the role of leveraged funds in that regard (comments in Figure 2).
In our view, massive dollar fundraising in money markets by A) US-based leveraged funds and B) Japanese financial institutions has heightened demand for short-term money.
- A) US-based leveraged funds take on high amounts of leverage by repeating the following: use equity sales proceeds to buy long-term bonds and use them as collateral to raise money in repo markets to fund purchases of other long-term bonds, which are re-collateralized for more long-term bond purchases, and so on (Figure 19).
- B) Japanese financial institutions, specifically life insurers and non-GSIB banks, have few stable sources of dollar funding. For these entities to invest in dollar-denominated bonds, they often first raise dollars in swap/forward/repo markets (forex hedged; mostly 3-month maturities). This money is then invested in 5-10y bonds (Treasuries, munis, mortgage bonds, corporate bonds, etc).
Note 2: In general, liquidity is high for short-duration funding and low for longer-duration investments like long-term bonds (liquidity and maturity transformation).
Risk of “negative carry” and asset selloffs
Leverage is being used to amplify yields, and so is trending higher (Figure 13).
Use of derivatives is spreading as well (Figures 14-15).
This has been enabled by ample dollar liquidity and low volatility in markets (Figure 18).
The above described trades are subject to uncertainty (risk) in that future liability funding costs are unknown. There is risk of “negative carry” when rolling over liabilities, ie funding costs exceed yield (returns) on assets. If the kind of repo market volatility seen in Sep 2019 and rising costs continue, there is a real risk some investors could be forced to sell off long-term bond holdings.
* * *
REITs with 10% yields: Ultra-leveraged vehicles
Spread: 1% x leverage 10x
Figures 16 and 17 show total assets and leverage (total assets / capital) for Annaly Capital and AGNC, listed agency mortgage REITs (Note 3) that are typical examples of leverage funds. Both have extremely high dividend yields at around 10% and are popular funds with individual investors. Spreads (ROA) are around 1%, but leverage is roughly 10x equity procured from the market, which has boosted dividend yield on equity to approx 10% (Figure 19).
Around 90% of liabilities are from short-term (within 6 months) repo funding (70-80% within 3 months). 80-90% of assets consist of 30-year MBS (residential mortgage-backed securities). They have worked to control interest risks (asset & liabilities duration mismatch risk) mainly using swaps, but mismatch risk tends to rise rapidly when MBS convexity risk prompts sharp interest rate fluctuations.
Leverage absorbs major dollar liquidity
These REITs operated at leverage of around 9x through 2012 but incurred damage to capital after an interest rate jump from the “Bernanke shock” caused a fall in asset holdings in 2013. Providers of repo funding became cautious about extending credit to these REITs, which subsequently operated at a leverage of around 7x for some time.
From 2H 2018, however, these REITs rapidly hiked leverage (Figure 17), and we think they and other types of leveraged funds absorbed a large amount of dollar funding in money markets, reflecting surging repo rates on 17 Sep 2019.
Note 3: Agency mortgage REITs are a type of mortgage REIT (mREIT) that invests in mortgage securities and are called this since they invest mainly in agency MBS. In recent years, they have expanded their investments to credit products (mainly BB rating or below), including RMBS, CMBS, and leveraged loans (total assets: from several % to approx 10%). Being classified as REITs, over 90% of agency mortgage REIT profits are distributed but are also tax exempt.
Figure 1. Collected comments (Fed balance sheet policy)
Balance sheet expansion comes with side effects
Minutes from 10-11 Dec 2019 FOMC, released on 3 Jan 2020: “A few participants raised the concern that keeping interest rates low over a long period might encourage excessive risk-taking, which could exacerbate imbalances in the financial sector. These participants offered various perspectives on the relationship between financial stability and policies that keep interest rates persistently low. They remarked that such policies could be inconsistent with sustaining maximum employment, could make the next recession more severe than otherwise, or could strengthen the case for the active use of macroprudential tools to guard against emerging imbalances.”
15 Jan 2020, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Robert Kaplan: “Many market participants believe that growth in the Fed balance sheet is supportive of higher valuations and risk assets.” “The Fed balance sheet is not free and growing the balance sheet has costs.” “All three of those actions are contributing to elevated risk-asset valuations,” “And I think we ought to be sensitive to that.” “It’s a derivative of QE when we buy bills and we inject more liquidity; it affects risk assets. This is why I say growth in the balance sheet is not free. There is a cost to it.” “I think we’ve done what we need to do up until now. But I think it’s very important that we come up with a plan and communicate a plan for winding this down and tempering balance sheet growth.” “It would be healthy to get to a point where, certainly, we don’t need to do these daily and term [repo] operations. But I also want to do that in a way that has a structure and mechanisms in place that will again temper, limit, restrain the growth in the balance sheet overall.”
Sources: FRB, SMBC NIKKO
Figure 2. Collected comments (US & Japanese financial institution balance sheet policies)
Role of leverage funds
8 Dec 2019, BIS “September stress in dollar repo markets: passing or structural?” “Yet none of these temporary factors can fully explain the exceptional jump in repo rates.” “The four largest US banks specifically turned into key players: their net lending position (reverse repo assets minus repo liabilities) increased quickly, reaching about $300 billion at end-June 2019.” ”The big four banks appear to have turned into the marginal lender, possibly as other banks do not have the scale and non-bank cash suppliers such as money market funds (MMFs) hit exposure limits. “At the same time, increased demand for funding from leveraged financial institutions (eg hedge funds) via Treasury repos appears to have compounded the strains of the temporary factors.” “Shifts in repo borrowing and lending by non-bank participants may have also played a role in the repo rate spike. Market commentary suggests that, in preceding quarters, leveraged players (eg hedge funds) were increasing their demand for Treasury repos to fund arbitrage trades between cash bonds and derivatives. Since 2017, MMFs have been lending to a broader range of repo counterparties, including hedge funds, potentially obtaining higher returns. These transactions are cleared by the Fixed Income Clearing Corporation (FICC), with a dealer sponsor (usually a bank or broker-dealer) taking on the credit risk. The resulting remarkable rise in FICC-cleared repos indirectly connected these players. During September, however, quantities dropped and rates rose, suggesting a reluctance, also on the part of MMFs, to lend into these markets. Market intelligence suggests MMFs were concerned by potential large redemptions given strong prior inflows. Counterparty exposure limits may have contributed to the drop in quantities, as these repos now account for almost 20% of the total provided by MMFs. ”
“Some asset managers use derivatives to manage their risk or replicate a portfolio. For instance, ETFs may use derivatives to help their return track a particular target. Funds which invest in fixed income securities may naturally have use for IRD products. Such funds have also been expanding in terms of AUM, with an increasing share of them in the form of ETFs. Gross derivatives positions for asset managers and leveraged funds are increasing faster than those of dealers. They were 37% larger from April 2016 to April 2019 for three-month eurodollar contracts on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, as compared with 18% for dealers.”
Sources: FRB, BIS, Teleconferences, Company materials, SMBC NIKKO
* * *
If after all this Neel Kashkari and his band of fintwit halfwits still needs “QE Conspiracists” to explain to him “how swapping one short term risk free instrument (reserves) for another short term risk free instrument (t-bills) leads to equity repricing” it’s clear that the inventor of TARP is either an idiot, along with everyone else who claims the Fed’s massive balance sheet expansion has no impact on stock prices, or simply has no interest in actually understanding the process he has helped create.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/06/2020 – 19:51 - Nightmare At Sea – Japan Discovers 42 Additional Coronavirus Cases On Quarentined Cruise Ship
Nightmare At Sea – Japan Discovers 42 Additional Coronavirus Cases On Quarentined Cruise Ship
Update (1945ET): In somewhat shocking news as Japanese markets open, TBS News reports 42 additional cases of coronavirus have been discovered on the Diamond Princess cruise ship which is anchored in Yokohama, Japan.
【速報】横浜に停泊中のクルーズ船内に新たに４１人の新型コロナ感染者 厚労省 #指定感染症 #感染症 #新型コロナウイルス pic.twitter.com/nnFZAnSQnb
— TBS NEWS (@tbs_news) February 7, 2020
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Japan says 273 people on the cruise ship were tested and 61 were found positive, and the 41 new patients have been sent to hospitals in 5 separate prefectures.
* * *
Update (1600ET): Japan has reportedly forced a second cruise ship to submit all of its passengers and crew to testing for the coronavirus after several dozen crew members exhibited symptom.
Japanese PM Shinzo Abe said no foreigners on board the MS Westerdam, run by Holland America Liner, would be allowed to disembark in Japan. The ship is capable of carrying 3,000, but it’s unclear how many are on board. Passengers on the Westerdam say the ship has already been refused entry to the Philippines and Taiwan over the virus fears.
Stephen Hansen, one tourist onboard the ship, has express concerns that the ship could be quarantined for two weeks.
In its most recent update, the cruise operator said passengers would now be disembarking in Yokohama rather than in Shanghai as originally planned/ But Japan appears to have wrecked those plans today by announcing that it wouldn’t allow any passengers to enter the country.
Holland America has been “closely monitoring” the “coronavirus situation” as more travel and leisure-related companies are being impacted by the drop in travel and leisure spending.
“Our medical experts are coordinating closely with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) to implement recommended screening, prevention and control measures for our ships,” said an earlier statement. Guests visiting our onboard medical centers for respiratory illness will be evaluated for coronavirus. Robust environmental disinfection onboard will be performed in addition to our regular stringent cleaning and sanitation protocols.”
A total of four cruise ships have now been held up because of sick passengers.
* * *
Thousands of people are trapped on two cruise ships where coronavirus is quickly spreading. Already, tests are coming back positive, with more expected in the coming days.
More than 7,300 people have been quarantined on two cruise liners, one off Japan and another off Hong Kong, for fears that the deadly virus has infected passengers and crew.
20 coronavirus infections have been confirmed on a cruise ship in Japan as thousands remain under quarantine on the vessel. pic.twitter.com/gHAKwlF5OE
— SCMP News (@SCMPNews) February 6, 2020
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A total of 3,700 passengers and workers are quarantined on Princess cruise ship, owned by Carnival Corporation & plc., which is moored off Yokohama, Japan.
Twenty passengers have already tested positive for coronavirus, with more expected to test positive in the coming days.
Infected passengers include three Americans, two Australians, seven Japanese, one from Taiwan, two Canadians, one New Zealander, and three Hong Kong citizens. One Filipino crew member is also sick, Carnival said in a statement.
Japan’s Health Ministry said a total of 20 had been infected with the deadly virus on the vessel. It said the rest of the passengers would remain in quarantine for two weeks.
The second ship is the World Dream, a cruise ship operated by Dream Cruises, currently moored in Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbor as a precautionary measure. All 4,000 passengers are undergoing testing after three former passengers tested positive for coronavirus.
Cruise ship under quarantine in #HongKong, tests for #coronavirus conducted as 30 crew members have fever
MORE: https://t.co/iWzBdY6Aeq pic.twitter.com/6dukgLrwfB
— RT (@RT_com) February 6, 2020
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Edith Poon, a spokesperson for Genting Hong Kong Limited, the holding company that owns Dream Cruises, confirmed that 30 crew members had symptoms of the virus.
“We are currently waiting for the results to come in,” Poon told USA TODAY. “Upon availability of the results, we shall comply with the Department of Health’s instruction on the next step forward. Until then, as advised by the Department of Health, all passengers of the cruise ship are to remain on board.”
Last week, there was a false alarm aboard the Costa Smeralda, when a female Chinese passenger displayed symptoms of the deadly virus. The ship was in quarantine off the coast of Italy, while health officials conducted tests. It was later discovered she had the “common flu,” and the ship was allowed to embark on the rest of its journey.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/06/2020 – 19:45 - Virus Cases Explode On Quarantined Cruise Ship In Japan As China Claims Slowdown In Number Of New Cases
Virus Cases Explode On Quarantined Cruise Ship In Japan As China Claims Slowdown In Number Of New Cases
Summary:
- Total cases stand at 31,439 as death toll climbs to 639
- China claims the growth in people under medical observation has peaked, and is now slowing.
- Japan reports 41 additional cases, for a total of 61 aboard the quarantined cruise ship
- Senior CCP official orders Wuhan to round up infected residents for mass quarantine camps
- Beijing completes second coronavirus hospital in Wuhan
- Wuhan hospital confirms that doctor who was one of first to warn about virus died on Thursday
- Economists warn China faces difficult dilemma in deciding when workers should return to work
- Taiwan halts visas for citizens of Macau and Hong Kong
- Germany confirms 13th case
- 2 suspected cases found in South Africa
- Dubai reports 3rd death outside China
* * *
Update (1955ET): Just when you thought it was safe to buy the f**king record high melt-up, TBS News reports that Japanese authorities have found another 42 people on the Diamond Princess cruise ship anchored in Yokohama have tested positive for Coronavirus.
【速報】横浜に停泊中のクルーズ船内に新たに４１人の新型コロナ感染者 厚労省 #指定感染症 #感染症 #新型コロナウイルス pic.twitter.com/nnFZAnSQnb
— TBS NEWS (@tbs_news) February 7, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Japan says 273 people on the cruise ship were tested and 61 were found positive, and the 41 new patients have been sent to hospitals in 5 separate prefectures.
* * *
Update (1925ET): China has just released its latest “official” data on the coronavirus, and just as we had suspected (given the precipitous slowdown from exponential growth yesterday), the acceleration has now ‘officially’ ended with 185,555 people under medical observation today, DOWN 309 from the 186,354 the prior day.
Mission Accomplished? Bear in mind that the average increase for all prior days was 17,159.
Of course, the number of cases and deaths is still increasing with 637 dead in China and 31,161 cases.
Even here China appears to be manipulating the data and instead of using an exponential growth rate as is the case for epidemics, is applying a quadratic equation to goalseek the numbers.
That said, according to the official data, the number of new confirmed and suspected cases appears to be slowing:
We wonder if the almost nationwide lockdown and policy shift to remaining in your home unless “severely” ill was the factor behind the slowdown in people receiving medical attention? Or whether it is a miracle that no ‘expert’ saw coming… apart from The WHO who all along claimed the “extreme measures” by China were “breathtaking.”
* * *
Update (1615ET): A senior Chinese official has ordered Wuhan authorities to immediately round up all residents infected with the novel coronavirus and place them in isolation, quarantine camps, or designated hospitals, according to the New York Times.
Inside the exhibition center in Wuhan that now serves as a hospital.Credit…Chinatopix, via Associated Press City investigators have also been ordered to go to each home and check the temperature of every resident, as well as conduct interviews with infected patients’ close contacts.
“Set up a 24-hour duty system. During these wartime conditions, there must be no deserters, or they will be nailed to the pillar of historical shame forever,” said Sun Chunlan, a vice premier in charge of leading the CCP’s response to the outbreak.
The city’s authorities have raced to meet these instructions by setting up makeshift mass quarantine shelters this week. But concerns are growing about whether the centers, which will house thousands of people in large spaces, will be able to provide even basic care to patients and protect against the risk of further infection. –NYT
* * *
Update (1440ET): Dubai just reported that a woman from the Philippines has died in the UAE. In response, the UAE has suspended flights to China except to Beijing. The Manila Times reported the death, citing the Philippines’ labor secretary.
The virus’s global death toll has climbed to 568.
The victim was identified as Amalia Collado Dapronoza, 58. Her death comes as 178 other patients remain under observation in the tiny Gulf kingdom. The Philippines is one of several countries planning to rescue its citizens from Wuhan, and a group of 45 filipinos from Wuhan are set to return to the Philippines on Feb. 9.
In Hong Kong, 3,600 people were preparing to spend a second night confined aboard the World Dream as authorities test everyone aboard after eight passengers caught the virus. Health officials in the financial hub said they were also asking some 5,000 Hong Kongers who had traveled on the ship since mid-January to contact them.
We mentioned earlier that Beijing had finished building the second of two coronavirus hospitals built in Wuhan over the past week and a half. Well, here’s a cool time-lapsed video of its construction:
China finished building the second of two coronavirus hospitals in just over a week. How they built them so quickly: https://t.co/T1gyCmdRm2 pic.twitter.com/IbfHcPQGdb
— Taylor Umlauf (@TaylorUmlauf) February 6, 2020
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* * *
Update (1230ET): Beijing has finished construction on the second coronavirus hospital in Wuhan – so hopefully more of the desperate patients stuck dying in their homes might soon have a bed at a public facility where their treatment can be overseen by doctors.
Chinese state media said the Leishenshan hospital, which will join the Huoshenshan hospital that opened Monday, will provide 1,600 beds and be staffed by 2,000 medical personnel. The project took roughly ten days.
As we reminded readers earlier, the WHO appears to have gladly taken up the task of backing up Beijing’s propaganda. But on Thursday, it confirmed a bit of bad news, saying that the doctor who was punished for his early warnings about the outbreak had succumbed to the virus. Now, Wuhan Central Hospital is denying that Li Wenliang, one of eight doctors who was punished by local police for his warnings, has died.
Instead, they said he was alive, but in critical condition, according to SCMP.
“In the fight against the pneumonia epidemic of the new coronavirus infection, our hospital’s ophthalmologist Li Wenliang was unfortunately infected. He is currently in critical condition and we are trying our best to resuscitate him,” it said in its official Weibo account.
Li, 34, an ophthalmologist at the Wuhan Central Hospital, was found to be infected with coronavirus on Saturday.
“We are very sorry to hear the loss of any frontline worker who is committed to care for patients…we should celebrate his life and mourn his death with his colleagues,” said Michael Ryan, director of the World Health Organisation’s health emergencies programme, said during a briefing on Thursday.
With Citadel’s Ken Griffin becoming the latest to warn about supply chain disruptions related to the virus, Beijing is facing a difficult choice when it comes to deciding when workers should return to their desks or assembly lines.
In a separate SCMP story, economist Lu Zhengwei said allowing the workforce to return to their jobs was crucial both for supporting the economy and ultimately ending the epidemic.
“It’s obviously desirable for employers who are now paying rent, salaries and social welfare for their employees, for nothing in return,” he said, adding that most small and medium enterprises in China could only last about a month in the current situation.
Meanwhile, a handful of new deaths have been confirmed by the SCMP:
As the death toll climbs, doctors told the NYT that the number of deaths and cases are likely being undercounted.
Many doctors believe that the number of deaths and infections are undercounted because hospitals and laboratories are under severe strain to test for the virus. Local officials in Hubei, the center of the outbreak, have called on health care workers to speed up the process.
As we reported below, there have been many anecdotal reports about sick people being turned away by hospitals in Wuhan.
Advisory firm Oxford Economics has lowered its growth outlook for China to 5.4% in 2020, down from 6%, and Goldman analysts believe the outbreak will ultimately shave 2 percentage points off global GDP by the time it’s all said and done.
Earlier, Taiwan halted visas for citizens of Hong Kong and Macau, saying on Thursday that it would suspend its online and landing visa services indefinitely for Hong Kong and Macau citizens, while non-citizens of Hong Kong and Macau with a history of travel to mainland China, Hong Kong or Macau would also be barred from visiting Taiwan. These measures will no doubt further infuriate Beijing, which has lashed out against “fearmongering” abroad.
“Beginning [midnight Thursday], we will suspend online and landing visa application services” until further notice, announced Chiu Chui-cheng, vice-chairman of Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, which sets the island’s policies towards mainland China.
They’re also temporarily banning cruise ships from docking – can’t say we blame them.
More suspected cases of the virus have been discovered in Africa, though none have been confirmed yet. Still, African health officials have been scrambling to brace for outbreaks; they’re hoping to suppress the virus before the outbreaks can overwhelm their fragile health systems, according to News24.
Two suspected coronavirus cases have been reported in KwaZulu-Natal although there was not yet any laboratory confirmation, the provincial health department said on Thursday.
Spokesperson Noluthando Nkosi said one case was being handled by a departmental facility, while the other was at a private facility in Durban.
“The department is monitoring the treatment and management of these patients quite closely.”
Nkosi said the public would be notified should there be any new developments, urging people to “remain calm and avoid being misled by false statements which are peddled on social media platforms.”
On Wednesday, a patient in Limpopo was cleared after being held in isolation at Ellisras Hospital in Lephalale.
In other news, Germany has confirmed its 13th coronavirus case, a case we imagine will also be found to be a human-to-human infection.
* * *
Update (1100ET): Is this the WHO’s “Mission Accomplished?”
During a press conference in Switzerland Thursday evening, Dr. Tedros, the WHO’s director-general, thanked the Gates Foundation (which committed $100 million) and Japan (which contributed $10 million) for answering the organization’s call for more funding to help suppress the coronavirus outbreak that has now claimed more than 560 lives, mostly in China. He also claimed that the number of new and suspected cases is finally starting to slow, a sign that the outbreak could be subsiding, and that the China-led response has been a success.
Though researchers have already mapped the virus’s DNA and are already working on a remedy, there is still a lot we don’t know about the virus, Dr. Tedros said. We don’t know where it came from (though there are theories) and we don’t 100% understand how it spreads. There are also many tools we don’t have, like a vaccine, that will hopefully soon be developed. In effect, “we’re shadow-boxing with the virus,” Dr. Tedros said. “We need to bring it into the light.”
The organization continued to sidestep questions about China’s censorship and its initial reluctance to share information about the outbreak with the international community.
Responding to a reporter’s question, the WHO rep confirmed that the doctor who was one of the first to detect the virus before being ignored and eventually sickened has now died.
Dr. Li Wenliang, the Chinese whistleblower doctor who warned the public about the outbreak back in December, succumbed to the virus in Wuhan on Thursday, the WHO said.
* * *
Thousands of athletes around the world breathed a sigh of relief on Thursday when Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe confirmed that the Summer Olympics in Tokyo won’t be delayed. Then again, if the outbreak continues to worsen in Japan and the broader region, who is going to want to come if they don’t feel safe?
As the second week of global pandemic panic comes to a close, China, increasingly frustrated that their ruse with the WHO didn’t manage to calm the international community, again registered its “strong objections” to the growing number of travel bans directed at its citizens.
The warning followed a decision by Taiwan’s health authority to ban all international cruise ships from docking at the island from Thursday as the number of suspected outbreaks aboard cruise ships grows.
The global death toll has ticked higher, reaching 566 overnight, while the total number of confirmed cases has broken above 28,000 to 28,384.
More than a dozen countries have imposed some kind of restriction on foreigners who have recently visited China. Within China, images of police clad in hazmat suites and touting infrared thermometers have become frighteningly common. Many airlines cancelled passenger routes to China, and some are extending those cancellations out to March or April.
“China is strongly concerned and dissatisfied,” said a spokeswoman for China’s Foreign Ministry. “We hope relevant countries will bear in mind overall relations and people’s interests and resume normal operation of flights to guarantee normal people-to-people exchange and cooperation.”
“I must stress that certain countries’ ill-advised decisions to suspend flights to and from China are neither cool-headed nor rational,” she added.
But while Beijing tries to spin the narrative to accuse other countries of racism, some brave journalists have shared the stories of families brave – or foolish – enough to speak out against the regime.
One resident of Wuhan who has been stuck in the city since the quarantine told the BBC that his uncle died in a quarantine because of supply shortages.
The image of life in Wuhan is every bit as bad as the most chilling conspiracies would have you believe.
“My uncle actually died in one of the quarantine points because there are no medical facilities for people with severe symptoms. I really hope my father can get some proper treatment but no-one is in contact with us or helping us at the moment.”
“I got in touch with community workers several times, but the response I got was, ‘there’s no chance of us getting a bed in the hospital.'”
Beijing, which just announced a spate of new treatment-related projects in Wuhan and the surrounding area, seemingly can’t get beds online fast enough. Because the government is literally condemns some elderly patients to die in their homes.
But for people like us, we can’t even get a bed now, let alone get one in the new hospitals.
If we follow the government’s guidelines, the only place we can go now is to those quarantine points. But if we went, what happened to my uncle would then happen to dad.
So we’d rather die at home.
Many are saying that if they knew authorities would lock down Wuhan last week, they would have left for the holiday earlier.
What I want to say is, if I knew they were going to lock down the city on 23 January, I would have definitely taken my whole family out, because there’s no help here.
If we were somewhere else, there might be hope. I don’t know whether people like us, who listened to the government and stayed in Wuhan, made the right decision or not.
In news from outside China, Indonesia is reportedly planning to build a quarantine center on an uninhabited island to isolate coronavirus victims, even though Indonesia has yet to record a single case of the virus, though 243 have been quarantined on the island of Natuna.
Across the globe, health officials are racing to develop treatments and testing methods for the virus. Wuhan, ground zero of the outbreak, opened an emergency test laboratory on Wednesday to begin human trials.
Over in Hong Kong, a top public health official has declared a community outbreak, according to the SCMP.
A day after the city government revealed that it would impose a mandatory 14-day quarantine on anybody crossing into Hong Kong from China, the city government has provided some more details on how it will combat the crisis. Most of the new cases in the city are being caused by human-to-human transmission. Six people have been diagnosed with the coronavirus over the past few days, five of whom had not left the city recently. Of the 21 cases in total, eight are believed to have no travel history relevant to the coronavirus.
Circling back to the mainland, local authorities in the city of Tianjin announced on Thursday that it would ban the exit and entry of its villages and compounds, becoming the latest city to essentially quarantine its entire population. Over in Wuhan, authorities are now demanding that all residents report their temperatures at least once per day.
So, that’s 60+ million people under quarantine in China. And though the pace of new cases in the country has slowed slightly, the virus is accelerating, especially in Asia.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/06/2020 – 19:36 - Scientists Warn: You Can Contract The Coronavirus More Than Once
Scientists Warn: You Can Contract The Coronavirus More Than Once
Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,
They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, however, that might not be the case when it comes to catching the coronavirus. Scientists are now warning the public that you can actually “relapse” and get the virus more than one time.
While most of the patients who have contracted the coronavirus 2019-nCoV eventually make a full recovery, they don’t walk away from the encounter immunized against the disease, as one might expect after a viral infection. Rather, Business Insider reports, you can theoretically catch the coronavirus multiple times, creating an unusual challenge for health officials trying to contain the outbreak.
“For those patients who have been cured, there is a likelihood of a relapse,” Zhan Qingyuan, the director of pneumonia prevention and treatment at the China-Japan Friendship Hospital, said during a Friday press conference.
The underlying idea behind a vaccination — or even “chicken pox parties” — is that exposure to a virus will trigger the immune system to generate antibodies that will shield that person from that virus in the future. But according to Chinese health officials, the antibodies created after a 2019-nCoV infection aren’t always strong enough to keep patients from getting sick again. –Futurism
The coronavirus has already spread and become more deadly than the SARS outbreak of the early 2000s. And because antibodies from this virus are very weak, it’ll make containment incredibly difficult.
“The antibody will be generated,” said Zhan.
“However, in certain individuals, the antibody cannot last that long.”
The best way to fight this virus is to simply prevent contraction. Because health officials and scientists still don’t know exactly how this virus spreads, it’s best to wear a face mask if you can, especially in a place with a lot of people in close contact (like an airport or airplane) and take on good handwashing measures.
How To Stay Healthy During Flu Season And Prevent Coronavirus Infection
This virus also has a high likelihood of mutation, which means it could get even more deadly before it’s over.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/06/2020 – 19:15
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