- Refugee Explosion "Even Greater" Than 2015 To Hit Europe, German Minister Warns
Refugee Explosion “Even Greater” Than 2015 To Hit Europe, German Minister Warns
The German government is warning that a number of indicators suggest Europe could be on the brink of witnessing a new refugee crisis explode on its borders.
Germany’s Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said early this week that refugees and migrants are set to flood Europe on a scale even bigger that the peak of the 2015 crisis. “We must do more to help our European partners with controls on the EU external borders. We have left them alone for too long,” he told Germany’s Bild am Sonntag newspaper after returning from a visit to Greece and Turkey, where he inspected the renewed refugee crisis first hand.
“If we do not do that we will once again face a refugee wave like in 2015 or maybe even greater,” Seehofer warned ominously.
Refugees arriving at the the Greek Island of Lesbos in 2015. Image source: Antonio Masiello via “6 Degrees” Seehofer further said that if the EU doesn’t unite to find “strength to solve this problem problem” it faces total “loss of control” if and when the next major crisis hits.
At the height of the crisis three years ago, which was driven by the vastly destabilizing wars in Syria and Libya, and by the turmoil left in the wake of the Islamic State caliphate in western Iraq, there were near weekly mass drownings and accidents involving migrants attempting to traverse the Mediterranean, as well as fires and unrest at makeshift refugee camps in France and Greece. It further created turmoil in the domestic politics of multiple EU countries, with a number of right-wing populist figures and parties coming to power on anti-illegal immigration platforms.
And now, with Turkey on the brink of a major military incursion into northeast Syria, the Middle East is about to witness a major new conflagration resulting in potentially millions of new refugees being pushed out of the Turkey-Syria border region.
Germany’s Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, left, via Deutsche Welle Coupled with that, Turkey’s President Erdogan recently threatened to release one million refugees on Europe if he can’t have his so-called ‘safe zone’ which is to reach some 30km deep (19 miles) inside Syrian territory. He threatened early last month: “We will be forced to open the gates. We cannot be forced to handle the burden alone,” while demanding that European countries give political support to the controversial plan that would end in annexing UN member Syria’s sovereign territory.
It was the 2015 crisis that saw precisely around a million refugees and migrants flood Europe, crossing by land through the Balkans, as well as making the more dangerous Mediterranean route.
It appears Interior Minister Seehofer is convinced Erdogan is not bluffing, and is warning Europe to be prepared for the chaos to come. Indeed recent figures published by the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), reveal that numbers of migrants crossing by sea from Turkey to Greece are shooting up over the past nine months, compared to the year prior.
Seehofer said of Turkey’s current situation, which is now openly declaring it stands ready to “correct the demographics” of northern Syria by forcibly removing its Kurdish inhabitants, and then move some 2 million Arab Syrian refugees into the ‘safe zone’, that “it is clear that we cannot manage the future with the resources of the past.” This in reference to a prior EU deal with Ankara to take back refugees from Greece for €6 billion in aid.
The main migrant routes to Europe at the opening of 2015 which saw a million flood Europe in a short span, something which some are warning is set to be repeated in the coming year.
One thing is for certain, should “all out war” — as the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have promised — be the result of the expected imminent Turkish invasion of Syria, there will be a new refugee explosion out of northern Syria and possibly Iraq, given Iraq’s Kurdistan region is precisely where many Syrian Kurdish as well as Christian civilians fleeing Turkish tanks would end up.
This is in addition to a renewed grinding multi-party civil war in Libya unfolding as Gen. Khalifa Haftar’s forces continue their push to wrest the capital of Tripoli from the UN-backed Government of National Accord.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/09/2019 – 02:45 - The Duplicitous Agenda Endorsed By The UN And NATO
The Duplicitous Agenda Endorsed By The UN And NATO
Authored by Ramona Wadi via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
To the undiscerning, the United Nations (UN) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) perform different roles in the international arena. Yet both organisations have a common aim – the promotion of foreign intervention. While the UN promotes its humanitarian façade, NATO provides the militarisation of the UN’s purported human rights agenda.
NATO’s participation at the 74th session of the UN General Assembly in September provided an overview of the current collaboration the organisation has with the UN. Jens Stoltelberg, NATO’s Secretary-General, mentioned the organisations’ collaboration in “working closely to support Afghanistan and Iraq”.
Since the 1990s, the UN and NATO cooperation was based on a framework which included decision-making and strategy on “crisis management and in the fight against terrorism.” In 2001, US President George W Bush launched his ‘War on Terror’ which eventually expanded to leave the Middle East and North Africa in perpetual turmoil, as the coined euphemism morphed into the so-called Arab Spring.
While the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 were led by the US, it is worth remembering that the absence of the organisation at that time is not tantamount to the exclusion of warfare from NATO member states. Notably, the US invasion of Afghanistan invoked Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which stipulates that an attack on a NATO member state constitutes an attack on all member states.
“For NATO-UN cooperation and dialogue to remain meaningful, it must continue to evolve.” The statement on NATO’s website is a bureaucratic approach which detaches itself from the human rights violations created and maintained by both parties, which form the premise of such collaboration.
UN Security Council Resolution 1373 (2001), upon which NATO based its collaboration with the UN, reaffirms, “the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence as recognised by the Charter of the United Nations.” The resolution provides impunity for member-states and other collaborators with the UN, including NATO, to define what constitutes terrorism while eliminating foreign intervention as a terror act, despite the ramifications which last long after the aggression has been terminated or minimised.
The UN-NATO duplicity is exposed in Stoltenberg’s speech when he states, “NATO has also contributed to developing UN disposal standards to counter improvised explosive devices, which remain one of the greatest threats to peacekeepers.”
Why are the UN and NATO selecting rudimentary forms of warfare over precision bombing which has killed thousands of civilians in the name of fighting terror or bringing democracy?
In 2011, the UNSC’s arms embargo was supposed to prevent the proliferation of weapons to the rebels in Libya – a contradiction given the UNSC’s authorisation for NATO to bomb Libya. France, however, defied the resolution by publicly declaring its proliferation of weapons to rebels in Libya, on the pretext of their necessity to protect Libyan civilians. NATO denied its involvement as an organisation in providing arms to the rebels, despite the fact that action was taken by a NATO member. With the UN endorsing foreign intervention and NATO implementing the atrocities, the UN can fall back on its alleged peace-building and humanitarian roles, of which there is never a decline due to the irreparable damage both organisations have wreaked upon exploited, colonised and ravaged countries. The cooperation lauded by NATO does not rest on a division of roles but rather on blurring the differentiation between war and humanitarianism, in order to generate both as a duplicitous agenda.
NATO maintains that the UNSC holds “primary responsibility” for maintaining international peace and security. What the statement evades is the individual interest of each member, as well as their collective framework as NATO members. To satisfy the UNSC, individual interests and NATO membership, a common denominator is imperative. For the perpetrators of foreign intervention, war constitutes the binding legacy.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/09/2019 – 02:00 - Madsen: The Plot To Overthrow The Pope
Madsen: The Plot To Overthrow The Pope
Authored by Wayne Madsen via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
The moment that Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina was elected the first Jesuit Roman Catholic pontiff in papal history, the political long knives aimed at Pope Francis I came out of the shadows of the Vatican.
From the outset of his papacy, Francis found himself dealing with his right-wing predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI – a rarity in papal history – who insisted on remaining domiciled in an apartment on Vatican grounds. Benedict has not remained in quiet retirement but has conspired with Francis’s politically influential enemies in the Vatican, Italy, the United States, and other countries.
Donald Trump, who has publicly criticized Francis, has not interfered as his surrogates, who include former White House strategist Steve Bannon; Cardinal Raymond Burke, the former Archbishop of St. Louis; Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States; and others have conspired with the powerful fascist-oriented Opus Dei sect of the church to undermine Francis’s authority. Trump’s eyes and ears inside the Vatican – US ambassador to the Holy See Callista Bisek Gingrich – is the wife of Newt Gingrich, the former Republican Speaker of the US House of Representatives, a convert to Catholicism, and a major Trump political ally.
Francis, a former bar bouncer in a tough working-class neighborhood of Buenos Aires, has not been a shrinking violet when it comes to fighting back against his right-wing enemies. Francis’s Italian parents were escaping Benito Mussolini’s fascist rule when they emigrated to Argentina. For Francis, defending the church against the fascist Opus Dei and its allies is a battle worth fighting.
Francis’s enemies have taken a page from the Trump political book. Francis vowed to clean up the church of pedophile priests but he has been charged by his right-wing enemies, including Vigano, Burke, Bannon, Opus Dei, the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate, and from behind the scenes – Benedict – of tolerating pedophiles and homosexuals in the church. This is the same sort of gaslighting to which Americans have become all-too-accustomed under Trump.
In order to limit Cardinal Burke’s international reach, Francis suspended him from the post of patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM), an autonomous international charity entity in Rome that issues its own passports and maintains diplomatic relations with 107 countries and maintains permanent observer status at the United Nations. In 2017, Francis came to the assistance of the Grand Chancellor of the SMOM, Albrecht von Boeselager, after discovering that Burke and Opus Dei were conspiring to oust Boeselager, a member of a German royal house, as Grand Chancellor. Burke and the rightists wanted to sack Boeselager for distributing condoms to people in Myanmar. Francis suspended Burke and appointed Archbishop Giovanni Angelo Becciu as the Pope’s special envoy to the SMOM. Francis is now assured that with Boeselager and Becciu as his eyes and ears inside the SMOM, the rightists and Opus Dei are checkmated when it comes to using the diplomatic offices of the SMOM for their own purposes. Francis also banned the right-wing Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate from conducting public masses in Latin. As far as limiting the power of the rightists inside the Vatican City State, Francis appointed Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga from Honduras as his enforcer to rid the Vatican hierarchy of the pro-Benedict faction, as well as pedophile enablers and financial fraudsters, money launderers, and embezzlers.
Francis told the Italian newspaper “La Repubblica” that Roman Catholic officials have often been “narcissists, flattered and thrilled by their courtiers,” adding, “the court [the Vatican curia] is the leprosy of the papacy.”
On October 1, 2019, Francis ordered Vatican police to seize documents, computers, and portable electronic devices from the Vatican Secretary of State and the Financial Information Authority, the latter the financial watchdog of the Vatican. In addition to these two offices, Francis has also placed the Institute of Religious Works (IOR), the so-called “Vatican Bank,” under increased supervision and control. The IOR has been misused in the past for a number of covert operations, including the funding of several right-wing Central Intelligence Agency-linked terrorist groups and death squads in Latin America, particularly the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (AAA), or “Triple A.”
Francis was also instrumental in denying to Bannon and Burke the use of a 13th century monastery, the Certosa di Trisulti in Collepardo in central Italy, as a training academy for neo-fascist political operatives from around the world. Bannon’s Brussels-based international “neo-fascisti” grouping, called “The Movement,” had made a deal with a group connected to Burke, the Institute of Human Dignity, or Dignitatis Humana Institute, to lease the 800-room monastery for political training. Burke is the president of the institute’s board of advisers, which provides a direct link between Burke and Bannon. Eleven Cardinals, all opponents of Francis, are on the board of advisers, including Walter Brandmuller; Edwin O’Brien, former Archbishop for the US Military Services and a proponent of the “Just War”; Robert Sarah, the former Archbishop of Conakry, Guinea and an opponent of large scale immigration; Peter Turkson of Ghana; Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith of Colombo, Sri Lanka; including US military intervention in Syria; and Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, a former Bishop of Kong Kong and leading opponent of China’s policies. Benjamin Harnwell, a noted conservative British Catholic, is the President of the Institute’s Board of Trustees. Bannon is both a member of the Board of Trustees and a patron of the institute.
Bannon called the proposed school the Academy for the Judaeo-Christian West. The Institute of Human Dignity and its British connections has led many to believe that it is also politically connected to the increasingly powerful Catholic wing of the British Conservative Party. Prime Minister Boris Johnson was baptized Catholic and the Speaker of the House of Commons, Jacob Rees-Mogg, is affiliated with right-wing Catholic circles.
From the outset, Francis understood that the Bannon training academy would not only be targeting progressive forces around the world but also his papacy. It was fortuitous for Francis that Nicola Zingaretti, the president of the Lazio region, in which the monastery is located, condemned the lease by Bannon’s group. Zingaretti is a member of the left-wing faction of the Democratic Party, which includes former Christian Democrats and Socialists.
The coup de grace against the fascist academy came in May of this year when it was discovered that the 19-year lease guarantor, a person purporting to be an official of the Jyske Bank of Gibraltar, had forged the lease guarantee letter. On May 31, 2019, the Italian Ministry of Heritage annulled the lease. The forged letter and the financial fraud concerns that led Francis to order files seized from the IOR and the Vatican Secretariat of State are indications that the Catholic right-wing, including Opus Dei, are not conceding defeat but are doubling down using any means necessary, even if they are illegal.
There is little doubt in Rome that Pope Francis and his allies were working as hard as they could to ensure that after the fall of the coalition government of the far-right League or “Lega” and the populist Five Star Movement, Lega leader and Interior Minister Matteo Salvini would not be able to form a new government. Instead, the Democratic Party and the Five Star Movement formed a center-left coalition and Salvini was relegated to the opposition. It has been reported in Rome that Francis appointed Cardinal Pietro Parolin as a special envoy to combat the influences of the neo-fascists in Italy and throughout the European Union. And Francis has picked up an important ally in Forza Italia, the party of former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, now a member of the European Parliament.
Bannon, Burke, and their allies gambled on winning control of an ancient monastery, the SMOM, and the Italian government. Pope Francis saw their bid and raised it. Francis’s royal flush has sent the neo-fascisti forces of Opus Dei, Bannon, and Salvini into a much-weakened opposition. The moral of the story for the fascisti is to never underestimate a one-time bar bouncer. Francis has been as effective in ousting the far-right from their perches of power in Rome as he once was in ejecting unruly drunks from bars in Buenos Aires.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/09/2019 – 00:05 - The Surge In "Surprise" Medical Bills Bankrupting Americans Can Be Blamed On Private Equity
The Surge In “Surprise” Medical Bills Bankrupting Americans Can Be Blamed On Private Equity
Surging “surprise” medical bills in the U.S. are private equity’s fault, a new FT opinion piece claims.
These “surprise” medical bills continue to be a major talking point in the U.S. and are likely to be a key issue during the upcoming 2020 Presidential race. The term refers to invoices that are generated after a patient is admitted to the hospital and treated, without their knowledge, by someone not in their insurance plan.
And a recent Stanford study shows that these “surprise” bills continue to become more ubiquitous. They are up from about 33% of visits in 2010 to almost 43% in 2016. For inpatient stays, the number is even more alarming: the jump goes from 26% to 42%, with the average cost per patient rising from $804 to $2,040. It’s an issue that only adds to the overwhelming debt bubble we have again created in the U.S.
The opinion piece notes that these rising costs come not from hospitals, but rather from the “backwaters of the financial markets”:
The prices of junk bonds issued by “physician services companies” have been sliding in the past month as their owners weigh the possibility and costs of political intervention. These point to the real source of the problem: private equity’s silent colonisation of parts of the healthcare profession.
A recent paper by two US academics highlights how private equity activity has driven up the price of healthcare for American consumers. The problem is a result of “the interplay of buyout strategies (which pile leverage on to companies and emphasise financial returns) and the business of treating people, where sick patients have no power to shop around and outcomes come first,” the piece notes.
Private equity has acted as a consolidator in healthcare services, building giant physician services groups like Envision, HealthTeam and AirMedical Group.
Envision was a company that was flipped between public and private ownership since 2005. It employs 70,000 staff and spans services like emergency rooms, radiology and anaesthesiology. The businesses are perfect for what private equity is looking for. The academic paper states:
“Emergency medical services are a perfect buyout target because demand is inelastic, that is it does not decline when prices go up.”
And in addition to being inelastic, demand is robust: about 50% of medical care comes from emergency room visits.
The deals that physician service groups work out with hospitals are rarely transparent to the public. And this is probably for good reason:
But a study by Yale University of the billing practices of EmCare, Envision’s physician staffing arm, showed that when it took over the management of emergency rooms, it nearly doubled patient charges compared with those levied by previous physician organisations.
Which raises the question why hospitals go along with these arrangements. Well, some have struck joint-venture deals with physician companies, splitting the extra revenues these entities stick on patients. But for many, they don’t have the resources or the industry clout to combat surprise billing on their own.
As a result, congress is now considering legislation to curb “surprise” billing in healthcare. The larger debate, as the U.S. will certainly be subjected to leading up to 2020, is whether or not private equity companies belong in the healthcare sector to begin with. Their tactics have done nothing but “give more credence to the arguments of Elizabeth Warren and others,” the piece concludes.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/08/2019 – 23:45 - Time To Reassess CrowdStrike's Credibility
Time To Reassess CrowdStrike’s Credibility
Authored by Julie Kelly via The Center for American Greatness,
Days before the Senate voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh last year, a former FBI assistant director appeared on MSNBC to suggest the Supreme Court nominee had a major credibility problem.
“This is not…an investigation about the sexual allegations, I think it really has moved toward credibility,” Shawn Henry, an NBC News analyst, told Nicolle Wallace on October 1, 2018.
“At this point now, there are very clear allegations, and subsequent to the judge’s testimony, people have come out who appear to be credible who…appear to be contradicting his testimony sworn before the United States Senate.”
Henry, clearly reciting Democratic talking points to imply Kavanaugh perjured himself before the Senate Judiciary Committee during his September showdown with Christine Blasey Ford, also referred to Ford as a “victim” and claimed that the FBI’s investigation into Kavanaugh’s testimony had “fallen short.”
Henry was presented to viewers as the channel’s “national security analyst,” but there was one title the network overlooked: Shawn Henry is a top executive for CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm hired by the Democratic National Committee to investigate the infamous hack of its email system in early 2016.
Perhaps not coincidentally, the firm determined that the Russians were behind the intrusion.
CrowdStrike’s June 2016 assessment remains the sole source of evidence to supply the pretext of the government’s Russian election interference claim; later, it would help bolster the Trump-Russia collusion fable.
The president, according to a transcript released by the White House, mentioned CrowdStrike during a phone call with the new Ukranian president over the summer. Now, the California-based company is facing renewed scrutiny both about the handling of the DNC email hack and the firm’s political affiliations. Last month, in response to questions about the firm’s clear connections to Democrats, CrowdStrike rejected accusations of bias in an FAQ posted on its website:
“CrowdStrike is not affiliated with any political party. We are a public cybersecurity company, and are non-partisan. We have done cybersecurity work for, and currently protect, both Republican and Democratic political organizations at the state, local, and federal level.”
That may be true in the most technical sense, but there are plenty of reasons to suspect that CrowdStrike is far from a disinterested player in the impeachment drama engulfing official Washington and gaslighting the American public. And since CrowdStrike produced the single piece of evidence used in the endless feedback loop to convince Americans that the Russians breached the DNC’s email system—the party refused to surrender its email devices to the FBI—reassessing the firm’s credibility in light of new information is warranted; in fact, it’s vital.
Henry, the president of CrowdStrike’s Washington operation, is a regular contributor to both MSNBC and NBC News programs. (His affiliation with CrowdStrike, however, is never mentioned.) Although he hasn’t worked for the FBI since 2012, Henry often weighs in as an FBI “expert,” opining on a variety of political issues from government shutdowns to the Kavanaugh debacle. Curiously, his views always come down on the side opposite of Donald Trump and the Republican Party.
In March 2017, Henry—who worked for Robert Mueller’s FBI during Barack Obama’s first term—participated in a post-inauguration forum to discuss the implications of Russia’s “hacking” the 2016 presidential election. The panel also featured former Hillary Clinton campaign manager John Podesta and Marc Elias, the general partner at Perkins Coie, a politically-influential law firm based in D.C..
It was a symbolic trio. Perkins Coie hired CrowdStrike in the spring of 2016 on behalf of the DNC. Instead of going directly to the FBI or other law enforcement agency about the breach, Democratic party leaders, working through Perkins Coie, retained CrowdStrike to find the culprits. Very cozy.
But that wasn’t Perkins Coie’s only involvement in the Russia-hacked-the-election plotline. The law firm also hired Fusion GPS—who in turn hired British political operative Christopher Steele to author his infamous dossier—on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the DNC around the same time Perkins retained CrowdStrike. According to disclosure reports, the DNC paid Perkins Coie $7.2 million during the 2016 election cycle: The PAC also paid CrowdStrike more than $400,000 during the same time period. (The DNC has paid CrowdStrike nearly $80,000 so far this year.)
And while CrowdStrike was working for the DNC in 2016, the firm also collaborated with key officials in the Obama Justice Department as it was ramping up its investigation into Trump’s presidential campaign. During a technology conference in March 2016, CrowdStrike hosted a cyber “war game” with Obama administration officials: “Four teams of ten people met for two hours to play the game,” according to an October 2016 profile in Esquire. “[National Security Division chief] John Carlin; Chris Painter…at the State Department; and Chris Inglis, the former deputy director of the NSA, were all part of the government team. A former member of GCHQ, the British intelligence organization, was on the international team. Ash Carter, the defense secretary, arrived halfway through and asked to play, but the game was already under way.”
Before Obama’s intelligence officials released a statement on October 7 that blamed the Russians for the DNC email breach, according to the Esquire article, Dmitri Alperovitch, CrowdStrike’s co-founder, was given a heads-up.
“Alperovitch got a phone call from a senior government official alerting him that a statement identifying Russia as the sponsor of the DNC attack would soon be released. Once again, Alperovitch was thanked for pushing the government along.”
The statement, issued by Obama’s Department of Homeland Security and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper one month before Election Day, lifted some of the wording from CrowdStrike’s report on the DNC breach. (Again, it’s important to note that no federal agency was allowed access to the DNC email servers; all evidence of Russian hacking came directly from CrowdStrike.)
Further, according to reporting by Michael Tracey, CrowdStrike had a contract with the FBI for $150,000 between July 2015 and July 2016 for unknown services.
Interesting.
So, to summarize, at the same time Perkins Coie hired Fusion GPS to dig up Russia-related dirt on Donald Trump, it hired CrowdStrike to investigate the hack of the DNC email systems. CrowdStrike, also at the same time, was working with the Obama Justice Department as the agency began investigating Trump campaign aides for suspected “collusion” with the Kremlin.
Even if one accepts those connections as standard Washington operating procedure, Henry’s political commentary should be enough to give more fair-minded observers pause about his company’s objectivity. In August, Henry appeared on Andrea Mitchell’s MSNBC show to push for stricter gun control in the aftermath of the El Paso mass shooting. “There’s a whole host of things that need to be done to change the climate, background investigations, background checks, will keep guns out of the hands of bad people,” Henry said on August 8. “But there’s a lot more that needs to be done in order to successfully mitigate what we’ve seen here over the past few years.” Yes, because mass shootings only started happening after Bad Orange Man was elected.
Last January, during the government shutdown, Henry warned that the move was affecting the “morale” of the FBI and threatened national security. “These operations are being impacted and that is a risk to the American public, it’s a risk to this country and it is absolutely a national security challenge,” Henry told MSNBC’s Brian Williams on January 23.
Henry also lamented the climate at the FBI after the arrest of the so-called package bomber Casar Sayoc last year. “What the FBI has gone through has been some morale issues of course with a lot of the language that’s been out there,” Henry said on the “Today” show on October 27, 2018. The language, it’s safe to assume, was criticism by President Trump, congressional Republicans and conservative media about the FBI’s activities in 2016 and 2017.
Trump foes dismiss any scrutiny of CrowdStrike as part of a “conspiracy theory.” But the tangled web between CrowdStrike, Democratic operatives, the Trump-hating media and the Obama Justice Department isn’t a theory, it is fact. And since the firm played a critical early role in planting the Russia collusion hoax, Trump and his allies are right to raise more questions.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/08/2019 – 23:25 - Rail Recession: Carloads Tumble To Thee-Year Lows Amid Manufacturing Implosion
Rail Recession: Carloads Tumble To Thee-Year Lows Amid Manufacturing Implosion
As manufacturing plummets to the weakest levels since September 2009 and new export orders collapse, the US railroad industry has jus seen carload volumes tumble to three-year lows, according to a weekly report from the Association of American Railroads (AAR), first reported by Bloomberg on Monday.
AAR’s report showed a decline in carloads for 3Q19, down 5.5%, and one of the most significant drops in three years, indicating that the US economy continues to decelerate into year-end. Most of the shipment declines were seen in autos, coal, grain, chemicals, and consumer goods, but there was a small improvement in crude oil shipments.
Bloomberg blames the trade war between the US and China for the rail recession.
“What’s quite clear is that we’re not yet at a trough. Trains have not yet bottomed,” said Ben Hartford, an analyst with Robert W. Baird & Co. “We need to have some clarity in trade policy.”
The manufacturing recession is more widespread than the mid-cycle slowdowns in 2012 and 2015/16. The slowdown has been concentrated in manufacturing for well over a year, driven by a downturn in business investments in 2019.
The rail slowdown is a direct result of a manufacturing recession. As of last week, there is an indication that the downturn has spilled over into service sector output and employment.
Now, “there are no pockets of growth,” said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Lee Klaskow, who said a “railroad recession” could be imminent in a recent report. “There’s really nothing that’s tapping me on the shoulder saying, ‘Hey look at me. I’m going to be your next growth engine.'”
Klaskow said, a rail recession isn’t a sign that a full-blown recession is imminent, but as we said a little bit ago, the slowdown has spilled over into services and employment, which could mean a much broader slowdown is already here.
Last Friday, we outlined how class 8 orders crashed 71% in September, reaching 12,600 units. This makes September the 11th consecutive month of YoY order declines and the 9th consecutive month of orders below 20,000.
Class 8 orders, otherwise known as heavy-duty trucks, are often seen as a pulse on the US economy. That can also be said for rail.
“That’s the risk at this point in time, that the consumer does begin to show impacts from the pain that we see on the manufacturing side,” Hartford said. As for rail freight, “when is it going to turn? I honestly have no idea.”
And we can answer Hartford’s question above: There are no indications that manufacturing will trough and turn higher this year – the deceleration should continue through year-end. This means a growth scare for the US economy is imminent, and or has already been triggered with the recent deluge of awful manufacturing and non-manufacturing data points.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/08/2019 – 23:05 - John Lennon Vs. The Deep State: One Man Against The "Monster"
John Lennon Vs. The Deep State: One Man Against The “Monster”
Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“You gotta remember, establishment, it’s just a name for evil. The monster doesn’t care whether it kills all the students or whether there’s a revolution. It’s not thinking logically, it’s out of control.”—John Lennon (1969)
John Lennon, born 79 years ago on October 9, 1940, was a musical genius and pop cultural icon.
He was also a vocal peace protester and anti-war activist and a high-profile example of the lengths to which the Deep State will go to persecute those who dare to challenge its authority.
Long before Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning were being castigated for blowing the whistle on the government’s war crimes and the National Security Agency’s abuse of its surveillance powers, it was Lennon who was being singled out for daring to speak truth to power about the government’s warmongering, his phone calls monitored and data files illegally collected on his activities and associations.
For a while, at least, Lennon became enemy number one in the eyes of the U.S. government.
Years after Lennon’s assassination it would be revealed that the FBI had collected 281 pages of files on him, including song lyrics. J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI at the time, directed the agency to spy on the musician. There were also various written orders calling on government agents to frame Lennon for a drug bust.
“The FBI’s files on Lennon … read like the writings of a paranoid goody-two-shoes,” observed reporter Jonathan Curiel.
As the New York Times notes, “Critics of today’s domestic surveillance object largely on privacy grounds. They have focused far less on how easily government surveillance can become an instrument for the people in power to try to hold on to power. ‘The U.S. vs. John Lennon’ … is the story not only of one man being harassed, but of a democracy being undermined.”
Indeed, all of the many complaints we have about government today – surveillance, militarism, corruption, harassment, SWAT team raids, political persecution, spying, overcriminalization, etc. – were present in Lennon’s day and formed the basis of his call for social justice, peace and a populist revolution.
For all of these reasons, the U.S. government was obsessed with Lennon, who had learned early on that rock music could serve a political end by proclaiming a radical message. More importantly, Lennon saw that his music could mobilize the public and help to bring about change. Lennon believed in the power of the people. Unfortunately, as Lennon recognized: “The trouble with government as it is, is that it doesn’t represent the people. It controls them.”
However, as Martin Lewis writing for Time notes: “John Lennon was not God. But he earned the love and admiration of his generation by creating a huge body of work that inspired and led. The appreciation for him deepened because he then instinctively decided to use his celebrity as a bully pulpit for causes greater than his own enrichment or self-aggrandizement.”
For instance, in December 1971 at a concert in Ann Arbor, Mich., Lennon took to the stage and in his usual confrontational style belted out “John Sinclair,” a song he had written about a man sentenced to 10 years in prison for possessing two marijuana cigarettes. Within days of Lennon’s call for action, the Michigan Supreme Court ordered Sinclair released.
What Lennon did not know at the time was that government officials had been keeping strict tabs on the ex-Beatle they referred to as “Mr. Lennon.” Incredibly, FBI agents were in the audience at the Ann Arbor concert, “taking notes on everything from the attendance (15,000) to the artistic merits of his new song.”
The U.S. government, steeped in paranoia, was spying on Lennon.
By March 1971, when his “Power to the People” single was released, it was clear where Lennon stood. Having moved to New York City that same year, Lennon was ready to participate in political activism against the U. S. government, the “monster” that was financing the war in Vietnam.
The release of Lennon’s Sometime in New York City album, which contained a radical anti-government message in virtually every song and depicted President Richard Nixon and Chinese Chairman Mao Tse-tung dancing together nude on the cover, only fanned the flames of the conflict to come.
The official U.S. war against Lennon began in earnest in 1972 after rumors surfaced that Lennon planned to embark on a U.S. concert tour that would combine rock music with antiwar organizing and voter registration. Nixon, fearing Lennon’s influence on about 11 million new voters (1972 was the first year that 18-year-olds could vote), had the ex-Beatle served with deportation orders “in an effort to silence him as a voice of the peace movement.”
Then again, the FBI has had a long history of persecuting, prosecuting and generally harassing activists, politicians, and cultural figures. Most notably among the latter are such celebrated names as folk singer Pete Seeger, painter Pablo Picasso, comic actor and filmmaker Charlie Chaplin, comedian Lenny Bruce and poet Allen Ginsberg.
Among those most closely watched by the FBI was Martin Luther King Jr., a man labeled by the FBI as “the most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country.” With wiretaps and electronic bugs planted in his home and office, King was kept under constant surveillance by the FBI with the aim of “neutralizing” him. He even received letters written by FBI agents suggesting that he either commit suicide or the details of his private life would be revealed to the public. The FBI kept up its pursuit of King until he was felled by a hollow-point bullet to the head in 1968.
While Lennon was not—as far as we know—being blackmailed into suicide, he was the subject of a four-year campaign of surveillance and harassment by the U.S. government (spearheaded by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover), an attempt by President Richard Nixon to have him “neutralized” and deported. As Adam Cohen of the New York Times points out, “The F.B.I.’s surveillance of Lennon is a reminder of how easily domestic spying can become unmoored from any legitimate law enforcement purpose. What is more surprising, and ultimately more unsettling, is the degree to which the surveillance turns out to have been intertwined with electoral politics.”
As Lennon’s FBI file shows, memos and reports about the FBI’s surveillance of the anti-war activist had been flying back and forth between Hoover, the Nixon White House, various senators, the FBI and the U.S. Immigration Office.
Nixon’s pursuit of Lennon was relentless and in large part based on the misperception that Lennon and his comrades were planning to disrupt the 1972 Republican National Convention. The government’s paranoia, however, was misplaced.
Left-wing activists who were on government watch lists and who shared an interest in bringing down the Nixon Administration had been congregating at Lennon’s New York apartment. But when they revealed that they were planning to cause a riot, Lennon balked. As he recounted in a 1980 interview, “We said, We ain’t buying this. We’re not going to draw children into a situation to create violence so you can overthrow what? And replace it with what? . . . It was all based on this illusion, that you can create violence and overthrow what is, and get communism or get some right-wing lunatic or a left-wing lunatic. They’re all lunatics.”
Despite the fact that Lennon was not part of the “lunatic” plot, the government persisted in its efforts to have him deported. Equally determined to resist, Lennon dug in and fought back. Every time he was ordered out of the country, his lawyers delayed the process by filing an appeal. Finally, in 1976, Lennon won the battle to stay in the country when he was granted a green card. As he said afterwards, “I have a love for this country…. This is where the action is. I think we’ll just go home, open a tea bag, and look at each other.”
Lennon’s time of repose didn’t last long, however. By 1980, he had re-emerged with a new album and plans to become politically active again.
The old radical was back and ready to cause trouble. In his final interview on Dec. 8, 1980, Lennon mused, “The whole map’s changed and we’re going into an unknown future, but we’re still all here, and while there’s life there’s hope.”
The Deep State has a way of dealing with troublemakers, unfortunately. On Dec. 8, 1980, Mark David Chapman was waiting in the shadows when Lennon returned to his New York apartment building. As Lennon stepped outside the car to greet the fans congregating outside, Chapman, in an eerie echo of the FBI’s moniker for Lennon, called out, “Mr. Lennon!”
Lennon turned and was met with a barrage of gunfire as Chapman—dropping into a two-handed combat stance—emptied his .38-caliber pistol and pumped four hollow-point bullets into his back and left arm. Lennon stumbled, staggered forward and, with blood pouring from his mouth and chest, collapsed to the ground.
John Lennon was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. He had finally been “neutralized.”
Yet where those who neutralized the likes of John Lennon, Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Robert Kennedy and others go wrong is in believing that you can murder a movement with a bullet and a madman.
Thankfully, Lennon’s legacy lives on in his words, his music and his efforts to speak truth to power. As Yoko Ono shared in a 2014 letter to the parole board tasked with determining whether Chapman should be released: “A man of humble origin, [John Lennon] brought light and hope to the whole world with his words and music. He tried to be a good power for the world, and he was. He gave encouragement, inspiration and dreams to people regardless of their race, creed and gender.”
Sadly, not much has changed for the better in the world since Lennon walked among us.
Peace remains out of reach. Activism and whistleblowers continue to be prosecuted for challenging the government’s authority. Militarism is on the rise, with local police dressed like the military, all the while the governmental war machine continues to wreak havoc on innocent lives across the globe. Just recently, for example, U.S. military forces carried out drone strikes in Afghanistan that killed 30 pine nut farmers.
For those of us who joined with John Lennon to imagine a world of peace, it’s getting harder to reconcile that dream with the reality of the American police state.
Meanwhile, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, those who dare to speak up are labeled dissidents, troublemakers, terrorists, lunatics, or mentally ill and tagged for surveillance, censorship, involuntary detention or, worse, even shot and killed in their own homes by militarized police.
As Lennon shared in a 1968 interview:
“I think all our society is run by insane people for insane objectives… I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal means. If anybody can put on paper what our government and the American government and the Russian… Chinese… what they are actually trying to do, and what they think they’re doing, I’d be very pleased to know what they think they’re doing. I think they’re all insane. But I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it.”
So what’s the answer?
Lennon had a multitude of suggestions.
“If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.”
“War is over if you want it.”
“Produce your own dream…. It’s quite possible to do anything, but not to put it on the leaders…. You have to do it yourself. That’s what the great masters and mistresses have been saying ever since time began. They can point the way, leave signposts and little instructions in various books that are now called holy and worshipped for the cover of the book and not for what it says, but the instructions are all there for all to see, have always been and always will be. There’s nothing new under the sun. All the roads lead to Rome. And people cannot provide it for you. I can’t wake you up. You can wake you up. I can’t cure you. You can cure you.”
“Peace is not something you wish for; It’s something you make, Something you do, Something you are, And something you give away.”
“If you want peace, you won’t get it with violence.”
And my favorite advice of all:
“Say you want a revolution / We better get on right away / Well you get on your feet / And out on the street / Singing power to the people.”
Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/08/2019 – 22:45 - "Liberate Hong Kong" – Blizzard Goes Berserk On Gamer For Hong Kong Support, Pulls Cash Prize
“Liberate Hong Kong” – Blizzard Goes Berserk On Gamer For Hong Kong Support, Pulls Cash Prize
Hong Kong player Chung “blitzchung” Ng Waig, a Hearthstone Grandmaster, appeared over the weekend on an official Taiwanese Hearthstone live stream for a post-game wrap-up, wearing protestor attire, the same attire that would be found at the Hong Kong riots, reported Kotaku.
During the live stream, he screamed in Chinese: “Liberate Hong Kong, a revolution of our age!”
The live stream hosts immediately cut the feed, and it was reported shortly thereafter that game developer Blizzard, pulled blitzchung’s cash winnings to avoid controversy in China.
As soon as blitzchung made the pro-Hong Kong protest statement, the hosts of the live stream hid under a desk.
One of the hosts said, “Ok, that’s it, Blitz bro,” as the production team killed blitzchung’s feed — and the live stream shortly ended with a commercial break.
[BREAKING] Hong Kong Hearthstone player @blitzchungHS calls for liberation of his country in post-game interview:https://t.co/3AgQAaPioj
@Matthieist #Hearthstone pic.twitter.com/DnaMSEaM4g
— 🎃 Inven Global 🎃 (@InvenGlobal) October 6, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Blizzard knew severe political consequences were ahead in China if it allowed blitzchung to go unpunished.
The game developer issued a statement shortly after the incident that said blitzchung violated a competition rule, which states:
2019 HEARTHSTONE® GRANDMASTERS OFFICIAL COMPETITION RULES v1.4 p.12, Section 6.1 (o)
Engaging in any act that, in Blizzard’s sole discretion, brings you into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages Blizzard image will result in removal from Grandmasters and reduction of the player’s prize total to $0 USD, in addition to other remedies which may be provided for under the Handbook and Blizzard’s Website Terms.
Blizard said the player had been removed as a Grandmaster from the game, his cash prize, and participation in Hearthstone esports will be suspended “for 12 months beginning from Oct. 5th, 2019, and extending to Oct. 5th, 2020”.
Blizzard also said they terminated the hosts of the official Taiwanese Hearthstone live stream.
“While we stand by one’s right to express individual thoughts and opinions, players and other participants that elect to participate in our esports competitions must abide by the official competition rules,” the statement said.
This comes at a time when Hong Kong protests intensified over the weekend. Protesters took to the streets on Saturday and Sunday in another round of violent clashes with police.
It’s already been a rocky start to the week for anyone speaking their minds on Hong Kong.
We reported earlier on Tuesday, China’s state broadcaster, CCTV, canceled broadcasts of NBA games in China after Daryl Morey tweeted (then swiftly deleted) a message of support for the Hong Kong protesters.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/08/2019 – 22:25 - Ripple CEO: Facebook's Libra Will Not Launch Before 2023
Ripple CEO: Facebook’s Libra Will Not Launch Before 2023
Authored by William Suberg via CoinTelegraph.com,
Brad Garlinghouse, the CEO of blockchain payments network Ripple, thinks that Facebook will fail to launch its Libra digital currency before 2023.
image courtesy of CoinTelegraph
Garlinghouse bets on a 3-year Libra delay
Speaking in an interview with Fortune on Oct. 7, Brad Garlinghouse argued that regulatory pushback would continue to plague the project that was only announced in June, noting:
“I would bet that Libra… let’s say, by the end of 2022, I think Libra will not have launched.”
Garlinghouse also noted various problems governments have raised with Facebook around the world over its digital currency plans.
As Cointelegraph reported, it was Germany’s finance minister who most recently vented concerns, arguing that money issuance should remain in the hands of the state.
Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, said likewise on Oct. 4, adding that the tech giant would not follow Facebook’s lead.
Facebook left with fewer allies
“I think maybe it would have been better received if Facebook had not been the point of the arrow,” Garlinghouse continued. He added that regulators likely saw Libra as a Facebook project.
The comments come after a particularly tough week for Facebook’s Libra Association, the nonprofit behind the project. On Friday, PayPal, one of its major backers, pulled out of participation altogether, citing worries that its own reputation would suffer.
“We remain supportive of Libra’s aspirations and look forward to continued dialogue on ways to work together in the future,” a representative of the firm told Cointelegraph.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/08/2019 – 22:05
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