- US, French Aircraft Carriers Rush Toward Syrian Coast To Find Numerous Russian Warships Already There
Two weeks ago, on November 5, and one week before the Paris terrorist attack, we reported that somewhat unexpectedly, France had dispatched its only aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, to “the eastern Mediterranean for operations against Isis in both Syria and Iraq.”
It was unclear just what these pre-emptive operations would be and why France is getting so dramatically involved in the campaign against ISIS. Not knowing the dramatic attack that was about to unfold (whose false flag origins have been quickly ignored as nobody has yet explained why a fake Syrian passport was found next to the suicide bomber), we speculated that this move had to do with the departure of the CVN-71 Theodore Roosevelt which had left the Persian Gulf region a month ago, leaving the entire 5th Naval Fleet without a US carrier presence for the first time in a decade.
One week later, we found out that Paris may have had an advance hint of what was about to unfold when on the night of Friday 13 it all fell into place.
But with the French aircraft carrier full steam ahead toward the Syrian coast, the US could not afford to leave the airborne defense of the region to the French, so it did what was just a matter of time: it weighed anchor on the CVN-75, Harry Truman which was deployed toward the Middle East where according to the Daily Press it will “fight the Islamic State.”
USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) Deploys from Norfolk, Va. from SldInfo.com on Vimeo.
According to the Press, “the Truman is expected to reach the Persian Gulf before the year’s end. The U.S. has been launching air strikes into Iraq and Syria from aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf — at least until last month, when the USS Theodore Roosevelt left the area after an extended deployment. The two-month gap is the first in nearly a decade that the U.S. has had no carrier in the region.”
While the Truman’s departure date was set more than a year ago, it came about six months earlier than first planned. In October 2014, it was announced that the ship would switch deployment cycles with the Norfolk-based USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, which required an additional 10 months in the shipyard.
As the Navy Times reports, “there were no immediate changes to deployment orders as a result of Friday’s terror attacks, but there is great resolve among the sailors to support their French allies, said Capt. Ryan Scholl, Truman’s skipper. Scholl said his crew is ready to bring peace or “violent destruction.“
Something tells us it will be the latter.
Once again, here is the ETA: Carrier Theodore Roosevelt left 5th Fleet in mid-October, leaving that region without a carrier until the Truman CSG gets there, which should be about six weeks, or just around the New Year.
Then again, according to the latest Stratfor naval map, the Truman is already approaching Gibraltar. If accurate, it means the carrier will be next to Syria in a couple of weeks tops.
Scholl offered assurance to coalition and U.S. forces still in the fight across Syria and Iraq as part of Operation Inherent Resolve.
“The Harry S. Truman battle group will be there in due time and execute our mission successfully,” he said. “We hope that brings some peace of mind to the people that are out there, both our coalition partners as well as our troops on the ground, and it brings a hard-to-swallow, deliberate pause in our enemy.”
Where things get very interesting is what the Navy Times says next:
ISIS is not the only challenge that awaits the flotilla, which includes the cruiser Anzio, Carrier Wing Air 7, and destroyers Bulkeley, Gravely and Gonzalez. Russian, Chinese and Iranian marines have established their presence in Syria, and Russian warships from the Black Sea have relocated to the eastern Mediterranean to protect fighter jets conducting airstrikes in support of Syria’s Assad regime. In preparation, the strike group’s Composite Training Unit Exercise focused on adversaries that more closely resembled those of the Cold War.
Russians and Iranians we knew about, but Chinese? Does the US Navy know something that has not been made public previously?
While we await the answer, what we do know is that suddenly the east Mediterranean is about to become a warship and aircraft carrier parking lot, with the Truman and de Gaulle side by side, just as we predicted it would be a month ago when we said that the summer of 2013 naval scenario is unfolding once again.
Then there are the Russians. Here’s the latest from Tass:
Ten ships of the Russian Navy are involved in the anti-terrorism operation in Syria, Russia’s Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu told President Vladimir Putin on Friday.
“The naval group comprises ten ships, six of them are in the Mediterranean,” the minister said.
Shoigu said the Caspian Flotilla warships on Friday launched 18 cruise missiles at terrorist positions in Syria hitting seven targets.
“On November 20, the Caspian Flotilla warships launched 18 cruise missiles at seven targets in the Raqqa, Idlib and Aleppo provinces of Syria. All the targets were hit,” Shoigu said.
As we said: busy, and it’s only going to get busier.
But the punchline is Russia is already treating the Syrian coastline as its own playground, and has imposed explicit no fly zones in the eastern Mediterranean as the following tweet reveals:
??? ????????? ???? ??-?? “Russian Navy exercise” ????????? 14–23 ??????, 21–23 ?????? ? 24–26 ?????? ??????????????. pic.twitter.com/Pi3qwpw1wB
— Ilya A. = ???? ?. (@ain92ru) November 20, 2015
What happens when both the French and the US navies, both packing dozens of airplanes, arrive and convert the Mediterranean off the Syrian coast into one big warship parking lot.
We can only hope that the sudden confluence of goodwill and best intentions by the superpowers to crush ISIS is genuine instead of merely a ploy to get everyone in the same place and result in the biggest ever Gulf of Tonkin redux and an “accidental” sinking of one or more ships… with or without a fake Syrian passport planted next to it.
- "Barrel Bombs" And Bullshit: The Tangled Threads Of Washington Lies About Syria And Russia
Submitted by Robert Parry via ConsortiumNews.com,
One way to view Official Washington is to envision a giant bubble that serves as a hothouse for growing genetically modified “group thinks.” Most inhabitants of the bubble praise these creations as glorious and beyond reproach, but a few dissenters note how strange and dangerous these products are. Those critics, however, are then banished from the bubble, leaving behind an evermore concentrated consensus.
This process could be almost comical – as the many armchair warriors repeat What Everyone Knows to Be True as self-justifying proof that more and more wars and confrontations are needed – but the United States is the most powerful nation on earth and its fallacious “group thinks” are spreading a widening arc of chaos and death around the globe.
President Barack Obama meets with his national security advisors in the Situation Room of the White House, Aug. 7, 2014. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
We even have presidential candidates, especially among the Republicans but including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, competing to out-bellicose each other, treating an invasion of Syria as the least one can do and some even bragging about how they might like to shoot down a few Russian warplanes.
Though President Barack Obama has dragged his heels regarding some of the more extreme proposals, he still falls in line with the “group think,” continuing to insist on “regime change” in Syria (President Bashar al-Assad “must go”), permitting the supply of sophisticated weapons to Sunni jihadists (including TOW anti-tank missiles to Ahrar ash-Sham, a jihadist group founded by Al Qaeda veterans and fighting alongside Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front), and allowing his staff to personally insult Russian President Vladimir Putin (having White House spokesman Josh Earnest in September demean Putin’s posture for sitting with his legs apart during a Kremlin meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu).
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Sept. 21, 2015.
Not surprisingly, I guess, Earnest’s prissy disapproval of what is commonly called “man spread” didn’t extend to Netanyahu who adopted the same open-leg posture in the meeting with Putin on Sept. 21 and again in last week’s meeting with Obama, who – it should be noted – sat with his legs primly crossed.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with U.S. President Barack Obama in the White House on Nov. 9, 2015. (Photo credit: Raphael Ahren/Times of Israel)
This combination of tough talk, crude insults and reckless support of Al Qaeda-connected jihadis (“our guys”) apparently has become de rigueur in Official Washington, which remains dominated by the foreign policy ideology of neoconservatives, who established the goal of “regime change” in Iraq, Syria and Iran as early as 1996 and haven’t changed course since. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “How Neocons Destabilized Europe.”]
Shaping Narratives
Despite the catastrophic Iraq War – based on neocon-driven falsehoods about WMD and the complicit unthinking “group think” – the neocons retained their influence largely through an alliance with “liberal interventionists” and their combined domination of major Washington think tanks, from the American Enterprise Institute to the Brookings Institution, and the mainstream U.S. news media, including The Washington Post and The New York Times.
This power base has allowed the neocons to continue shaping Official Washington’s narratives regardless of what the actual facts are. For instance, a Post editorial on Thursday repeated the claim that Assad’s “atrocities” included use of chemical weapons, an apparent reference to the now largely discredited claim that Assad’s forces were responsible for a sarin gas attack outside Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013.
After the attack, there was a rush to judgment by the U.S. State Department blaming Assad’s troops and leading Secretary of State John Kerry to threaten retaliatory strikes against the Syrian military. But U.S. intelligence analysts refused to sign on to the hasty conclusions, contributing to President Obama’s last-minute decision to hold off on a bombing campaign and to accept Putin’s help in negotiating Assad’s surrender of all Syrian chemical weapons (though Assad still denied a role in the sarin attack).
Subsequently, much of the slapdash case for bombing Syria fell apart. As more evidence became available, it increasingly appeared that the sarin attack was a provocation by Sunni jihadists, possibly aided by Turkish intelligence, to trick the United States into destroying Assad’s military and thus clearing the way for a Sunni jihadist victory.
We now know that the likely beneficiaries of such a U.S. attack would have been Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front and the spinoff known as the Islamic State (also called ISIS, ISIL or Daesh). But the Obama administration never formally retracted its spurious sarin claims, thus allowing irresponsible media outlets, such as The Washington Post, to continue citing the outdated “group think.”
The same Post editorial denounced Assad for using “barrel bombs” against the Sunni rebels who are seeking to overthrow his secular government, which is viewed as the protector of Syria’s minorities – including Christians, Alawites and Shiites – who could face genocide if the Sunni extremists prevail.
Though this “barrel bomb” theme has become a favorite talking point of both the neocons and liberal “human rights” groups, it’s never been clear how these homemade explosive devices shoved out of helicopters are any more inhumane than the massive volumes of “shock and awe” ordnance, including 500-pound bombs, deployed by the U.S. military across the Middle East, killing not only targeted fighters but innocent civilians.
Nevertheless, the refrain “barrel bombs” is accepted across Official Washington as a worthy argument for launching devastating airstrikes against Syrian government targets, even if such attacks clear the way for Al Qaeda’s allies and offshoots gaining control of Damascus and unleashing even a worse humanitarian cataclysm. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Obama’s Ludicrous ‘Barrel Bomb’ Theme.”]
False-Narrative Knots
But it is now almost impossible for Official Washington to disentangle itself from all the false narratives that the neocons and the liberal hawks have spun in support of their various “regime change” strategies. Plus, there are few people left inside the bubble who even recognize how false these narratives are.
So, the American people are left with the mainstream U.S. news media endlessly repeating storylines that are either completely false or highly exaggerated. For instance, we hear again and again that the Russians intervened in the Syrian conflict promising to strike only ISIS but then broke their word by attacking Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front and “our guys” in Sunni jihadist forces armed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and the CIA.
Though you hear this narrative everywhere in Official Washington, no one ever actually quotes Putin or another senior Russian official promising to strike only at ISIS. In all the quotes that I’ve seen, the Russians refer to attacking “terrorists,” including but not limited to ISIS.
Unless Official Washington no longer regards Al Qaeda as a terrorist organization – a trial balloon that some neocons have floated – then the Putin-lied narrative makes no sense, even though every Important Person Knows It to Be True, including Obama’s neocon-leaning Defense Secretary Ashton Carter.
The U.S. political and media big shots also mock the current Russian-Iranian proposal for first stabilizing Syria and then letting the Syrian people decide their own leadership through internationally observed democratic elections.
Okay, you might say, what’s wrong with letting the Syrian people go to the polls and pick their own leaders? But that just shows that you’re a Russian-Iranian “apologist” who doesn’t belong inside the bubble. The Right Answer is that “Assad Must Go!” whatever the Syrian people might think.
Or, as the snarky neocon editors of The Washington Post wrote on Thursday, “Mr. Putin duly dispatched his foreign minister to talks in Vienna last weekend on a Syrian political settlement. But Moscow and Tehran continue to push for terms that would leave Mr. Assad in power for 18 months or longer, while — in theory — a new constitution is drafted and elections organized. Even a U.S. proposal that Mr. Assad be excluded from the eventual elections was rejected, according to Iranian officials.”
In other words, the U.S. government doesn’t want the Syrian people to decide whether Assad should be kicked out, an odd and contradictory stance since President Obama keeps insisting that the vast majority of Syrians hate Assad. If that’s indeed the case, why not let free-and-fair elections prove the point? Or is Obama so enthralled by the neocon insistence of “regime change” for governments on Israel’s “hit list” that he doesn’t want to take the chance of the Syrian voters getting in the way?
Reality Tied Down
But truth and reality have become in Official Washington something like Gulliver being tied down by the Lilliputians. There are so many strands of lies and distortions that it’s impossible for sanity to rise up.
Another major factor in America’s crisis of false narratives relates to the demonizing of Russia and Putin, a process that dates back in earnest to 2013 when Putin helped Obama sidetrack the neocon dream of bombing Syria and then Putin compounded his offense by assisting Obama in getting Iran to constrain its nuclear program, which derailed another neocon dream to bomb-bomb-bomb Iran.
It became ominously clear to the neocons that this collaboration between the two presidents might even lead to joint pressure on Israel to finally reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians, a possibility that struck too close to the heart of neocon thinking which, for the past two decades, has favored using “regime change” in nearby countries to isolate and starve Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Palestinian groups, giving Israel a free hand to do whatever it wished.
So, this Obama-Putin relationship had to be blown up and the point of detonation was Ukraine on Russia’s border. Official Washington’s false narratives around the Ukraine crisis are now also central to neocon/liberal-hawk efforts to prevent meaningful coordination between Obama and Putin in countering ISIS and Al Qaeda in Syria and Iraq.
Inside Official Washington’s bubble, the crisis in Ukraine is routinely described as a simple case of Russian “aggression” against Ukraine, including an “invasion” of Crimea.
If you relied on The New York Times or The Washington Post or the major networks that repeat what the big newspapers say, you wouldn’t know there was a U.S.-backed coup in February 2014 that overthrew the elected Ukrainian government of Viktor Yanukovych, even after he agreed to a European compromise in which he surrendered many powers and accepted early elections.
Instead of letting that agreement go forward, right-wing ultra-nationalists, including neo-Nazis operating inside the Maidan protests, overran government buildings in Kiev on Feb. 22, 2014, causing Yanukovych and other leaders to flee for their lives.
Behind the scenes, U.S. officials, such as neocon Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, had collaborated in the coup plans and celebrated the victory by Nuland’s handpicked leaders, including the post-coup Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, whom she referred to in an earlier intercepted phone call as “Yats is the guy.”
Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who pushed for the Ukraine coup and helped pick the post-coup leaders.
Nor would you know that the people of Crimea had voted overwhelmingly for President Yanukovych and – after the coup – voted overwhelmingly to get out of the failed Ukrainian state and reunify with Russia.
The major U.S. news media twists that reality into a Russian “invasion” of Crimea even though it was the strangest “invasion” ever because there were no photos of Russian troops landing on the beaches or parachuting from the skies. What the Post and the Times routinely ignored was that Russian troops were already stationed inside Crimea as part of a basing agreement for the Russian fleet at Sevastopol. They didn’t need to “invade.”
And Crimea’s referendum showing 96 percent approval for reunification with Russia – though hastily arranged – was not the “sham” that the U.S. mainstream media claimed. Indeed, the outcome has been reinforced by various polls conducted by Western agencies since then.
Russian President Vladimir Putin addresses a crowd on May 9, 2014, celebrating the 69th anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany and the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Crimean port city of Sevastopol from the Nazis. (Russian government photo)
The MH-17 Case
The demonization of Putin reached new heights after the July 17, 2014 shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine killing all 298 people onboard. Although substantial evidence and logic point to elements of the Ukrainian military as responsible, Official Washington’s rush to judgment blamed ethnic Russian rebels for firing the missile and Putin for supposedly giving them a powerful Buk anti-aircraft missile system.
That twisted narrative often relied on restating the irrelevant point that the Buks are “Russian-made,” which was used to implicate Moscow but was meaningless since the Ukrainian military also possessed Buk missiles. The real question was who fired the missiles, not where they were made.
But the editors of the Post, the Times and the rest of the mainstream media think you are very stupid, so they keep emphasizing that the Buks are “Russian-made.” The more salient point is that U.S. intelligence with all its satellite and other capabilities was unable – both before and after the shoot-down – to find evidence that the Russians had given Buks to the rebels.
Since the Buk missiles are 16-feet-long and hauled around by slow-moving trucks, it is hard to believe that U.S. intelligence would not have spotted them given the intense surveillance then in effect over eastern Ukraine.
A more likely scenario of the MH-17 shoot-down was that Ukraine moved several of its Buk batteries to the frontlines, possibly fearing a Russian airstrike, and the operators were on edge after a Ukrainian warplane was shot down along the border on July 16, 2014, by an air-to-air missile presumably fired by a Russian plane.
But – after rushing out a white paper five days after the tragedy pointing the finger at Moscow – the U.S. government has refused to provide any evidence or intelligence that might help pinpoint who fired the missile that brought down MH-17.
Despite this remarkable failure by the U.S. government to cooperate with the investigation, the mainstream U.S. media has found nothing suspicious about this dog not barking and continues to cite the MH-17 case as another reason to despise Putin.
How upside-down this “Everything Is Putin’s Fault” can be was displayed in a New York Times “news analysis” by Steven Erlanger and Peter Baker on Thursday when all the “fundamental disagreements” between Obama and Putin were blamed on Putin.
“Dividing them are the Russian annexation of Crimea and its meddling in eastern Ukraine, Moscow’s efforts to demonize Washington and undermine confidence in NATO’s commitment to collective defense, and the Kremlin’s support of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria,” Erlanger and Baker wrote.
Helping ISIS
This tangle of false narratives is now tripping up the prospects of a U.S.-French-Russian-Iranian alliance to take on the Islamic State, Al Qaeda and other Sunni jihadist forces seeking to overthrow Syria’s secular government.
The neocon Washington Post, in particular, has been venomous about this potential collaboration which – while possibly the best chance to finally resolve the horrific Syrian conflict – would torpedo the neocons’ long-held vision of imposed “regime change” in Syria.
In editorials, the Post’s neocon editors also have displayed a stunning lack of sympathy for the 224 Russian tourists and crew killed in what appears to have been a terrorist bombing of a chartered plane over the Sinai in Egypt.
On Nov. 7, instead of expressing solidarity, the Post’s editors ridiculed Putin and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi for not rushing to a judgment that it was an act of terrorism, instead insisting on first analyzing the evidence. The Post also mocked the two leaders for failing to vanquish the terrorists.
Or as the Post’s editors put it: “While Mr. Putin suspended Russian flights on [Nov. 6], his spokesman was still insisting there was no reason to conclude that there had been an act of terrorism. … While Western governments worried about protecting their citizens, the Sissi and Putin regimes were focused on defending themselves. …
“Both rulers have sold themselves as warriors courageously taking on the Islamic State and its affiliates; both are using that fight as a pretext to accomplish other ends, such as repressing peaceful domestic opponents and distracting attention from declining living standards. On the actual battlefield, both are failing.”
Given the outpouring of sympathy that the United States received after the 9/11 attacks and the condolences that flooded France over the past week, it is hard to imagine a more graceless reaction to a major terrorist attack against innocent Russians.
As for the Russian hesitancy to jump to conclusions earlier this month, that may have been partially wishful thinking but it surely is not an evil trait to await solid evidence before reaching a verdict. Even the Post’s editors admitted that U.S. officials noted that as of Nov. 7 there was “no conclusive evidence that the plane was bombed.”
But the Post couldn’t wait to link the terrorist attack to “Mr. Putin’s Syrian adventure” and hoped that it would inflict on Putin “a potentially grievous political wound.” The Post’s editors also piled on with the gratuitous claim that Russian officials “still deny the overwhelming evidence that a Russian anti-aircraft missile downed a Malaysian airliner over Ukraine last year.” (There it is again, the attempt to dupe Post readers with a reference to “a Russian anti-aircraft missile.”)
The Post seemed to take particular joy in the role of U.S. weapons killing Syrian and Iranian soldiers. On Thursday, the Post wrote, “Syrian and Iranian troops have lost scores of Russian-supplied tanks and armored vehicles to the rebels’ U.S.-made TOW missiles. Having failed to recapture significant territory, the Russian mission appears doomed to quagmire or even defeat in the absence of a diplomatic bailout.”
Upping the Ante
The neocons’ determination to demonize Putin has upped the ante, turning their Mideast obsession with “regime change” into a scheme for destabilizing Russia and forcing “regime change” in Moscow, setting the stage for a potential nuclear showdown that could end all life on the planet.
To listen to the rhetoric from most Republican candidates and Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, it is not hard to envision how all the tough talk could take on a life of its own and lead to catastrophe. [See, for instance, Philip Giraldi’s review of the “war with Russia” rhetoric free-flowing on the campaign trail and around Official Washington.]
A nuclear test detonation carried out in Nevada on April 18, 1953.
At this point, it may seem fruitless – even naïve – to suggest ways to pierce the various “group thinks” and the bubble that sustains them. But a counter-argument to the fake narratives is possible if some candidate seized on the principle of an informed electorate as vital to democracy.
An argument for empowering citizens with facts is one that transcends traditional partisan and ideological boundaries. Whether on the right, on the left or in the center, Americans don’t want to be treated like cattle being herded by propaganda or “strategic communication” or whatever the latest euphemism is for deception and manipulation.
So, a candidate could do the right thing and the smart thing by demanding the release of as much U.S. intelligence information to cut this Gordian knot of false narratives as possible. For instance, it is way past time to declassify the 28 pages from the congressional 9/11 report addressing alleged Saudi support for the hijackers. There also are surely more recent intelligence estimates on the funding of Al Qaeda’s affiliates and spin-offs, including ISIS.
If this information embarrasses some “allies” – such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey – so be it. If this history makes some past or present U.S. president look bad, so be it. American elections are diminished, if not made meaningless, when there is no informed electorate.
A presidential candidate also could press President Obama to disclose what U.S. intelligence knows about other key turning points in the establishment of false narratives, such as what did CIA analysts conclude about the Aug. 21, 2013 sarin attack and what do they know about the July 17, 2014 shoot-down of MH-17.
The pattern of the U.S. government exploiting emotional moments to gain an edge in an “info-war” against some “enemy” and then going silent as more evidence comes in has become a direct threat to American democracy and – in regards to nuclear-armed Russia – possibly the planet.
Legitimate secrets, such as sources and methods, can be protected without becoming an all-purpose cloak to cover up whatever facts don’t fit with the desired propaganda narrative that is then used to whip the public into some mindless war frenzy.
However, at this point in the presidential campaign, no candidate is making transparency an issue. Yet, after the deceptions of the Iraq War – and with the prospects of another war based on misleading or selective information in Syria and potentially a nuclear showdown with Russia – it seems to me that the American people would respond positively to someone treating them with the respect deserving of citizens in a democratic Republic.
- Two Gepolitical Wrongs Do Not Make A Right
Global geopolitics (and why it won't end well) explained in 57 words…
The political left is happy to see people cross borders but would happily restrict the flow of capital and goods.
The political right is happy to see capital and goods cross borders but would happily build a fence to restrict the flow of people.
I’m afraid that the compromise might be to restrict people, capital and goods.
* * *
- This Is How Far America Has Fallen
Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
Give me liberty, or give me death!
– Partrick Henry, American Founding Father, 1775
They value their civil liberties more than they value life. I disagree with that. You want to be free and dead? I’d rather be not free and alive
– Billionaire Hillary Clinton donor Haim Saban, 2015
Just in case you’re wondering what the people bankrolling Hillary Clinton’s Presidential campaign think about civil liberties, you now have your answer.
Here’s what billionaire Haim Saban had to say about civil liberties during an interview with The Wrap:
What are people in Hollywood saying about the Paris terror attacks?
Many members of the Hollywood community are very liberal and they value their civil liberties more than they value life. I disagree with that. You want to be free and dead? I’d rather be not free and alive. The reality is that certain things that are unacceptable in times of peace — such as profiling, listening in on anyone and everybody who looks suspicious, or interviewing Muslims in a more intense way than interviewing Christian refugees — is all acceptable [during war]. Why? Because we value life more than our civil liberties and it’s temporary until the problem goes away. But to say this is shameful — I disagree.
[ISIS] said, ‘We’re going to Paris,’ and they went to Paris. They’re saying they’re now going to Washington. Watch out, they might. I’m not suggesting we put Muslims through some kind of a torture room to get them to admit that they are or they’re not terrorists. But I am saying we should have more scrutiny.
Yes, because it’s so liberal to push a false Orwellian choice between freedom and safety. The entire concept of civilization and liberty revolves around the belief individuals never have to make such a sacrifice Indeed, America never would have been founded in the first place had the colonists accepted Saban’s infantile logic.
How does this guy sound any different from George W. Bush or Dick Cheney? The answer is he doesn’t, which makes perfect sense because Hillary Clinton is a dyed in the wool neocon. Always has been always will be. Meanwhile, The Wrap highlighted just how important Haim Saban is to Hillary…
TheWrap spoke to Saban about his support for the Democratic presidential frontrunner — he and and his wife, Cheryl, gave $2 million to Priorities USA Action, Clinton’s Super PAC, and hosted a fundraiser in May that netted another $2 million.
In case you forget, I’ve highlighted Saban in the past. Recall the following from the post, Inside the Mind of an Oligarch – Sheldon Adelson Proclaims “I Don’t Like Journalism”:
At the conference, which also featured top Democratic funder Haim Saban, Adelson also said Israel would not be able to survive as a democracy: “So Israel won’t be a democratic state, so what?” he asked Saban, adding that democracy, after all, is not mentioned in the Torah,and recommended that the country build a “big wall” to protect itself, saying, “I would put up a big wall around my property.”
Saban and Adelson should buy The New York Times together in an effort to bring more “balance” to the newspaper’s coverage of Israel and the Middle East, Adelson suggested to wild applause. Adelson already owns Israel Hayom, a free Israeli newspaper widely seen as reflecting the positions of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is considered close to Adelson, and, more recently, news website NRG and religious newspaper Makor Rishon.
Haim Saban, a media mogul and close Democratic ally of Hillary Rodham Clinton, criticized President Obama’s outreach to Iran, declaring that “we’ve shown too many carrots and a very small stick.”
Still, Saban said that he thinks Clinton would repair the relationship and that he has told her he would spend “whatever it takes” to propel her into the White House. That includes giving millions of dollars to Priorities USA, a super PAC that helped Obama in 2012 and is revving up to aid Clinton in 2016.
But hey…
- Stagflation Ahead: Goldman Is "Unreservedly Disappointed" With Latin America
As regular readers are no doubt aware, we’ve devoted quite a bit of time to covering Brazil’s unfolding economic meltdown. The latest data out this week showed GDP in “free fall mode” (to quote Barclays), inflation hitting double digits for the first time in over a decade, and unemployment soaring to 7.9% in August, up sharply from just 4.3% a year earlier.
In many ways, Brazil is representative of the problems facing EM as a whole. Slumping commodity prices, currency carnage, FX pass through inflation, sensitivity to decelerating Chinese demand and to Beijing’s yuan deval, Brazil has it all – they even have a seemingly intractable political crisis, and as we never tire of pointing out, idiosyncratic political risk factors have become an important part of the EM calculus (see Turkey and Malaysia for instance).
Because Brazil tends to dominate the discussion when we talk about Latin America, it’s sometimes easy to forget that the outlook for Brazil’s neighbors matters as well. Latin America is a net commodities exporter and we can learn a lot from observing the interplay between slumping prices for commodities, rising inflation, lackluster economic growth, and central banks forced by the prospect of rising prices to adopt procyclical, rather than counter-cyclical policies despite their weakening economies.
When last we checked in on Latin America as a whole, we said the following:
“…a plunging currency, FX pass through inflation, and a soft outlook for growth is a pretty terrible place to be in if you’re a central bank, but that’s exactly where things stand for the “LA-5” (believe it or not, that’s not a reference to the Lakers, it’s short for Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru), who very shortly will be forced to decide whether the risks associated with further FX weakness outweigh those of hiking rates into a poor economic environment.”
We went on to highlight comments from Goldman regarding the likely path for Latin American monetary policy given the factors outlined above.
Now, Goldman is out with its latest take on the macro outlook for Latin America and unsurprisingly, the forecast is “uninspiring.”
“Latin America’s growth performance has been eroding since 2010, and has unreservedly disappointed in recent years. Aggregate regional growth peaked in 2010 at above 6%, moderated steadily throughout 2011-13, and downshifted sharply to a significantly below-trend pace during 2014-15,” Goldman begins, adding that “unfortunately, the near future may not be more endearing as we do not envisage a major pickup in growth buoyancy and expect inflation to remain relatively high.”
Here’s a more comprehensive assessment:
Given the shifting external backdrop, the region is unlikely to count on strong balance of payments dynamics to leverage and support a visible economic recovery. The expectation of low-for-longer commodity prices, weak non-commodity export demand, moderating FDI and portfolio inflows, and likely more expensive and selective access to external funding, may well demand additional current account adjustment. This would require further currency depreciation, higher domestic savings and contained investment (i.e., weak domestic absorption). Furthermore, we see virtually no room for additional countercyclical fiscal or monetary stimulus to support a more vigorous recovery.
And here’s a big picture look at the growth/inflation outlook across the region:
As you can see, the inflation/growth mix doesn’t look particularly favorable. As Goldman goes on to note, “Latin America is forecasted to grow an uninspiring +0.8% in 2016; a very shallow recovery from the -0.3% growth rate forecasted for 2015.” Consider the following graphic, which underscores the extent to which the region is performing well below trend:
Subpar, disappointing growth that’s disastrously below trend and will remain marginally so through 2020. Got it.
Of course what you don’t want if you’ve got lackluster growth, is rising inflation because that sets the stage for the “S” word. Unfortunately, that’s where Latin America looks to be headed. Here’s Goldman on the inflation outlook:
Despite the weak growth dynamics, inflation is expected to remain high across LatAm. Average inflation ex-Venezuela is expected to reach 8.1% in 2016, down slightly from the forecasted 8.7% average for 2015.
In Brazil, headline inflation is expected to end 2015 in double digits and to moderate gradually throughout 2016, albeit to a still very high 6.5% due to weak policy fiscal and monetary policy credibility, renewed deterioration of inflations expectations, additional BRL depreciation, lingering upward pressure on administered and regulated prices, strong inertial forces, and widespread formal and informal indexation mechanisms which introduce significant downward rigidity (stickiness) in price formation.
Overall, inflationary pressures across the Andean economies are expected to remain relatively high throughout 1H2016 given the expected lagged pass-through from currency depreciation and the impact from what is expected to be an intense El Niño weather phenomenon.
And finally, coming full circle to our original discussion of how high inflation and weak currencies have put regional CBs in a position of having to, at the least, remain on hold and more likely adopt procyclical policies despite the tepid outlook for growth, Goldman suggests that “the scope for monetary accommodation in the region in 2016” is limited at best. “In Brazil, sticky above-target inflation should limit the capacity of the central bank to ease monetary policy in 2016 [and] the central banks across the Andean region have been normalizing monetary policy during 2H2015 given persistent and generalized above-target inflationary pressures,” Alberto Ramos (the Goldman analyst who has a talent for making lists of Brazil’s myriad problems that are so long as to induce riotous laughter) adds.
Last, but certainly not least, here’s how the FX situation will likely develop in 2016:
Regional currencies have weakened significantly in 2014-15 and we expect further weakness in 2016. We expect most currencies to depreciate moderately in 2016 given the evolving global backdrop (low commodity prices with additional declines forecasted for copper prices, rising dollar yields, and strengthening USD), the unhappy domestic combination of low growth and high inflation, and a number of idiosyncratic factors.
So while it’s probably too strong to equate the overall regional outlook with the stagflationary nightmare gripping Brazil, all of the above does indeed suggest that Latin America is stuck with a decidedly unfavorable growth-inflation outcome which is likely to worsen materially going forward. On that note, we’ll close with one last passage from Goldman:
Despite the undistinguished growth outlook, in our assessment, the spectrum of risks is still tilted to the downside. In fact, the vector of risks is to a large extent not materially different from the risks the region was facing at the beginning of 2015, namely: (1) sharperthan-expected growth deceleration in China; (2) another leg down in commodity prices; (3) potential quasi-sovereign and private corporate sector forced deleveraging or balance sheet distress given heavy borrowing over the last few years and diminished profitability, and, last but not the least, (4) sharper-than-expected deceleration of capital inflows triggered by a strengthening USD, rising Dollar yields, and/or renewed bouts of volatility in international financial markets that could dampen sentiment towards emerging markets.
- The Syrian Refugee Situation Summed Up (Using M&Ms)
- South Pacific Showdown? Japan May Send Warships To China Islands
On Tuesday, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin told the press that contrary to the narrative being propagated by Washington and its allies in the South Pacific, Beijing had actually shown “great restraint” in the South China Sea.
China, Liu went on to explain, has tolerated the “occupation” of the disputed waters even as Beijing has “both the right and the ability to recover the islands and reefs illegally occupied by neighboring countries.” Essentially, Liu said China would be well within its rights to forcibly expel The Philippines, Malaysia, and Vietnam from the Spratlys.
Liu’s comments came ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit held in Manila on Thursday and Friday.
At the close of the Summit, Japanese PM Shinzo Abe met with President Benigno Aquino – who earlier this year compared the Chinese to Nazis – to discuss the possibility that Japan could provide Manila with “large ships” that the Philippines can use to patrol the South China Sea.
As Reuters reported on Friday, “the deal will mark the first time Japan has agreed to directly donate military equipment to another country, and is the latest example of Abe’s more muscular security agenda.”
“There was a request from President Benigno Aquino regarding the provision of large patrol vessels to the Philippine Coast Guard and Japan would like to consider the specifics,” Abe said in a statement.
Reuters goes on to note that “rather than challenge Beijing directly by sending warships or planes to patrol the South China Sea, Japan is helping to build the military capacity of friendly nations with claims to parts of the waterway.”
Well don’t look now, but Abe may soon move beyond the mere provision of ships to Japan’s allies. Here’s Nikkei with more:
Tokyo will consider dispatching its Self-Defense Forces to the South China Sea, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told U.S. President Barack Obama here Thursday, suggesting a possible role for Japan in patrolling those tense waters.
Abe said his government is watching how the situation in that body of water affects Japan’s national security. Several nations have competing claims to various islands in the South China Sea.
“The United States-Japanese alliance is one of the lynchpins of our security as well as Japan’s,” Obama told reporters before his roughly 90-minute meeting with Abe, their first since the prime minister visited Washington in April.
In their talk, Abe expressed support for what the U.S. calls “freedom of navigation exercises” in the South China Sea — sailing warships through waters claimed by China around islands it has built. Obama said America will continue to do so routinely.
Japan will support countries with a stake in the situation and reject all unilateral actions that seek to change the status quo or raise tensions, Abe said.
Bear in mind that in addition to the generally “frosty” relations between Tokyo and Beijing, Japan and China are at odds over Beijing’s construction of oil and gas exploration platforms close to disputed waters in the East China Sea:
Make no mistake, if Japan starts to conduct the same type of “freedom of navigation” exercises near the Spratlys that the US has now pledged to carry out at least twice per quarter, it will be more than Beijing can bear.
The US is one thing, Japan is entirely another and if Ash Carter and The Pentagon are really looking to escalate a South Pacific conflict, they can certainly do so by encouraging Abe to send warships near Fiery Cross, Subi, and Mischief.
- Largest Immigration Wave In Modern History Ends: More Mexicans Are Leaving The US Than Entering
The 'Great Recession' was evidently so bad for the economy that it stopped the net influx of illegal immigrants from Mexico. For the first time since the 1940s, more Mexicans have been leaving the U.S. to return home than arriving, a reversal that brings down the curtain on the largest immigration wave in modern American history. As WSJ reports, the Pew Research Center figures released Thursday suggest that the surge in legal and illegal Mexican immigration that helped transform America – and remains a contentious issue on the presidential campaign trail – may have peaked for good.
Pew Hispanic found that, according to official numbers, more than 800,000 undocumented workers came to the United States during 2009-2014 while more than 1 million fled the U.S. during the same period. It seems that employment became more difficult after the 2008 economic crisis, while Mexico’s economy actually improved.
Apparently there are so few good jobs that many Mexican migrants – including both those that are legal and illegal – departed or stop coming in and turned instead to work in their home country where they can also be with family.
According to Pew Research, best estimates and careful research show a dramatic change in illegal immigration:
More Mexican immigrants have returned to Mexico from the U.S. than have migrated here since the end of the Great Recession, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of newly available government data from both countries. The same data sources also show the overall flow of Mexican immigrants between the two countries is at its smallest since the 1990s, mostly due to a drop in the number of Mexican immigrants coming to the U.S.
From 2009 to 2014, 1 million Mexicans and their families (including U.S.-born children) left the U.S. for Mexico, according to data from the 2014 Mexican National Survey of Demographic Dynamics (ENADID). U.S. census data for the same period show an estimated 870,000 Mexican nationals left Mexico to come to the U.S., a smaller number than the flow of families from the U.S. to Mexico.
[…]
Mexico is the largest birth country among the U.S. foreign-born population – 28% of all U.S. immigrants came from there in 2013. Mexico also is the largest source of U.S. unauthorized immigrants.
[…]
A majority of the 1 million who left the U.S. for Mexico between 2009 and 2014 left of their own accord, according to the Mexican government’s ENADID survey data.
While it is true that many immigrants are not officially counted and many estimates put the number of undocumented workers much higher than 12 or 13 million, that number is declining for the first time since the 1970s.
This chart below tells a story that words alone cannot describe, and images of border crossings and protests fail to capture.
The situation is economic much more than it is political. The Wall Street Journal suggests several factors have undermined the lure of the U.S.
Mexican families have fewer mouths to feed as the country’s birthrate has declined to near replacement level, similar to that of the U.S., relieving economic pressure that motivated migrants to go north to find higher-paying jobs than are available in Mexico. Meanwhile, Mexico’s economy improved.
"The days of mass immigration from Mexico are over," said Pia Orrenius, senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas who studies migration. "Slower population growth in Mexico along with a stable economy and an expanded public-safety net are developments that have trimmed the 'push factor.'"
But, as SHTFPlan.com's Mac Slavo writes, the celebration of a historic turning of the tide for one of the most contentious issues in American politics may also herald the tough times ahead for Americans and everyone else working here, regardless of status.
The jobs have essentially dried up, and things stand to get even worse if/when the next economic bomb drops. And that could be any day now.
The writing is on the wall, the system is on edge, and something as simple as a Federal Reserve rate hike could mean financial desperation for millions upon millions of Americans.
Perhaps surprisingly, many Mexican nationals no longer view life in the United States as a better opportunity, with many seeing it is as on-par with life in Mexico:
While almost half (48%) of adults in Mexico believe life is better in the U.S., a growing share says it is neither better nor worse than life in Mexico. Today, a third (33%) of adults in Mexico say those who move to the U.S. lead a life that is equivalent to that in Mexico
But with the receding tide of immigrants from south of the border may come larger and larger numbers of immigrants from China and India, as well as Islamic countries, including many technically skilled workers here on H-1B visas who are replacing American jobs.
USA Today reports on the shift – not of overall immigration numbers, but of their sources:
“The nature of immigration itself is beginning to change,” [Mark Hugo Lopez, director of Hispanic research at Pew Research] said. “It looks like Mexican migration is at an end.”
The reversal of Mexican migration doesn’t mean that the United States is seeing fewer immigrants overall, just that their countries of origin are changing.
The United States has seen a record number of Central Americans fleeing violence in the past few years, straining the country’s ability to process their requests for asylum. In addition, Lopez said, immigrants from China, India and other Asian nations are coming as students and high-tech workers. Eventually, Asians will become the dominant share of the immigrant population, he added.
Though they claim to have now reversed their decision, Disney recently came under fire for decision to layoff all of its American workers – including those with decades of experience – and replace them with cheaper (but equally skilled) IT workers from India.
The move, cancelled or not, is a sign of the times for a situation that may become more desperate and gloomy with each passing year for native American workers who once assumed relative wealth among the middle class, but are now fighting for survival.
President Obama, for his part, has over-extended – well, abused really – his executive authority to grant amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants from Mexico, but they too may soon prefer their country of origin – particularly if the coming financial implosion hits worst in the United States.
- "It Looks Like A Warzone" – Army, APCs, Roadblocks Deployed In Brussels After Explosives, Chemical Weapons Found
In the aftermath of last night’s warning of an “imminent” terror threat in Brussels when OCAM Crisis Center and the government raised the country’s terror alert to the highest level, today the escalation continues and the Belgian capital looks like not only a ghost town but something out of a Call of Duty warzone after authorities deployed special forces, and APCs, shut the metro, locked down shopping centers, closed sporting events, and warned the public to avoid crowds, train stations, airports and commercial districts because of a “serious and imminent” threat of an attack.
As Reuters reports, a week after the Paris attacks carried out by Islamic State militants, of whom one suspect from Brussels is at large and said by authorities to be highly dangerous, Brussels was placed on the top level “four” in the government’s threat scale after a meeting of top ministers, police and security services.
“The advice for the population is to avoid places where a lot of people come together like shopping centers, concerts, events or public transport stations wherever possible,” a spokesman for the government’s crisis center said.
As AFP reported earlier, the spike in the terror threat is due to a risk of attacks by “weapons and explosives”
#BREAKING Belgium terror alert linked to a risk of attacks by ‘weapons and explosives’: PM
— Agence France-Presse (@AFP) November 21, 2015
The local security forces are taking no chances, and as can be seen on the photos below, APC have been deployed as the city barricades itself with the use of roadblocks at strategic locations.
Metro closed, all football games cancelled and city center looks like military base. #Brussels 2015 #Bruxelles pic.twitter.com/FP8UoCOFv5
— Zaprudsky (@ZaprudskyOU) November 21, 2015
this is brussels right now. It looks like the war. #Bruxelles pic.twitter.com/iOzES4H3Jg
— harry saw me (@lwtharoId) November 21, 2015
Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel declined to give the reason why the authorities raised the alert level but told a news conference the government would review the security situation on Sunday afternoon and that the decision to raise the threat level was taken “based on quite precise information about the risk of an attack like the one that happened in Paris where several individuals with arms and explosives launch actions, perhaps even in several places at the same time.” The metro system would remain closed until then, in line with the recommendation of the crisis center, he said.
The reason for the dramatic escalation is that chemicals and explosives were among the items found in the during a police raid on Vandepeerboom Street area in the immigrant neighborhood of Molenbeek, a rundown area where Paris attacker Abdelhamid Abaaoud was suspected of operating a terrorist cell.
L’Echo has more:
A search was conducted on Friday at the home of a suspect placed under arrest, federal prosecutors said on Saturday. Some weapons have been discovered, but no explosives or explosive belt.
The suspect was arrested Thursday in the series of searches carried out in Brussels. The person concerned is suspected of involvement in terrorist attacks and participation in activities of a terrorist group.
The find came as Belgium’s capital entered a security lockdown. The government has warned that there could be a repeat of Paris-style attacks in the country’s capital, prompting the closure of subways in Brussels and the deployment of heavily armed police and soldiers.
Fears that terrorists may use chemical or biological weapons quickly spread to Paris where according to the Guardian, security has been stepped up at key water supply sites in Paris, after the French prime minister warned the country could not rule out attacks from “chemical or biological weapons”.
The heightened security comes as reports claim that biohazard suits have been stolen from a Paris hospital, the Telegraph reports. Eau de Paris, the municipal water company, yesterday told Le Parisien that access to its sites has been limited to only the necessary service personnel, and that they have been accredited by the defence ministry.
Furthermore, we learned today that one more suspect from last Friday’s terror attack has been arrested in Brussels which has quickly emerged as the nerve center of last week’s Paris attacks.
According to Belgian media @RTBFinfo a key suspect in the #ParisAttacks was arrested in the Brussels region last night
— Michael Horowitz (@michaelh992) November 21, 2015
As Reuters further adds, the crisis center website said it was calling on local authorities to cancel large events, urge people to avoid crowds, postpone soccer matches, close the Brussels metro for the weekend and stepping up the military and police presence. Suspected militant Salah Abdeslam, 26, returned home to Brussels from Paris after the attacks, when his elder brother Brahim blew himself up at a cafe.
Fears of the risk he still poses prompted the cancellation last week of an international friendly soccer match in Brussels against Spain. The crisis center said weekend games in the top two professional divisions should now be postponed.
The alert level for the whole country was raised following the Paris attacks to level three out of four, implying a “possible or probable” threat. Previously, only certain sites, such as the U.S. embassy, were at level three.
Belgium, and its capital in particular, have been at the center of investigations into the Paris attacks – which included suicide bombers targeting a France-Germany soccer match – after the links to Brussels emerged. Three people detained in Brussels are facing terrorism charges.
As a reminder, French authorities have said the attacks were planned in Brussels by a local man, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, 28, who fought for Islamic State in Syria and was killed in the siege of an apartment in the Paris suburb of St. Denis on Wednesday.
Salah Abdeslam, who was from the same Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek and is said by officials to have known Abaaoud in prison, was pulled over three times by French police but not arrested as he was driven back to Brussels early last Saturday by two of the men now in custody.
As well as Abdeslam’s brother, a second man from Molenbeek, Bilal Hadfi, was also among the Paris suicide bombers.
Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon told reporters he wanted a register of everyone living in Molenbeek because it was not clear at present who was there, with authorities conducting door-to-door checks of every house. “The local administration should knock on every door and ask who really lives there,” Jambon said. Curiously when Donald Trump suggests doing something comparable in the US, immediate comparisons with Hitler emerge.
Meanwhile, as the photos below show, soldiers are already on guard in all key parts of Brussels, including at the institutions of the European Union headquartered in the city. Brussels is also home to the headquarters of NATO.
More military and police deploy roadblocks around central #Brussels following terror threat. pic.twitter.com/XpQDmOK9KD
— M. Cruickshank CN (@MJ_Cruickshank) November 21, 2015
Finally, Belgium’s interior ministry has released the following list of recommendations what the local population should do while the terror threat is at its highest level.
Evaluation of the terror threat – level 4 – Recommandations for the Brussels-Capital Region #Brussels #infographic pic.twitter.com/ArvZvMdzG6
— CrisisCenter Belgium (@CrisiscenterBE) November 21, 2015
- These Are The Stocks Most Hated By Hedge Funds (And Why You May Want To Buy Them)
Back in the summer of 2013 we revealed what the best “alpha-generating” strategy was in a New Normal where hedge fund clustering would ultimately lead to such dramatic hedge fund hotel implosions such as what was seen in the third quarter (described in detail in “What Hedge Fund Panic Looks Like“) and where central banks themselves do their best to crush anyone who dares to short single names courtesy of $13 trillion in excess liquidity.
But while buying the most shorted names (expecting furious central bank and HFT-catalyzed short squeezes) had been a great way to outperform the market in 2012 thru 2014, in 2015 this strategy took a back seat as suddenly the most hated names revealed that there was a reason why they were most hated, and plunged as the Fed’s determination to push stocks higher no matter the cost was put into question.
However, now that the Fed et al have made it beyond clear a downtick is unacceptable even as hedge funds are dramatically underperforming the market and are all – absolutely all of them – rushing to buy the same 5 stocks into year-end due to FOMO, even the tiniest deviation from a priced to perfection market will make the Valeant hedge fund hotel collapse of Q3 seem like a dress rehearsal if F, or A, or N, or G or all of them were to be Philidored.
It would also force a sequential scramble to cover shorts as margin calls are quietly and not so quietly administered on the increasingly underperforming hedge funds (for whom a crowdsourced margin call funding attempt will not be a feasible way out unlike novice E-traders).
What does all this mean?
Well, since central banks have made it abundantly clear they will not allow the S&P to drop even a few modest percent, and since going short the most beloved hedge fund names also carries with it the risk of substantial margin calls (not to mention inlimited downside) the best bearish trade into the year end is, paradoxically, to go long the most shorted names with the expectation that hedge fund blow ups will force domino-like, sequential short squeezes.
In other words, the most bearish trade going into the year end period is to go long a handful of very specific stocks.
So which are the stocks that have the highest hedge fund short interest as a % of market cap? For the answer we go to the latest hedge fund tracker by Goldman.
The answer: first, here are the stocks with a sub $1 billion market cap:
And next, the large, $1+ billion companies:
We will equal-weight CIX this basket and see how it performs relative to the market over the next few weeks. We hope to provide periodic updates on how this trade, made possible thanks to the Fed totally breaking the market’s discounting function, is performing.
- Caught On Tape: Russia Launches Cruise Missiles Against ISIS Targets
Make no mistake, the Russian campaign against anti-Assad elements operating in Syria was what you might call “relentless” right from the very beginning.
From the time a Russian three star general strolled into the US embassy in Baghdad on September 30 and told whoever was there that airstrikes in Syria “start in 1 hour, stay out of the way”, Moscow has bombed militant targets day and night in hundreds upon hundreds of strikes using Su-34s, Su-25s and Su-24Ms to wreak havoc on anything that even looks like a rebel.
But as ruthless as the air campaign already was, the downing of a Russian passenger jet over the Sinai Peninsula by Islamic State’s Egyptian affiliate made the situation immeasurably worse (if you’re a militant) and as we noted on Wednesday, The Kremlin has now sent in the strategic bombers.
Tupolev Tu-95 Bear
Tu-22 Blinder
Tu-160 Blackjack
In addition to the deployment of the strategic bomber fleet – which Moscow says will allow Russia to double the number of strikes it can launch – The Kremlin is also stepping up sea-based cruise missle attacks from the Caspian fleet.
As RT reports, “the Russian military has launched cruise missiles against Islamic State positions in Syria from both the Mediterranean and Caspian seas, one of which killed over 600 terrorists in the Deir Ex-Zor Province, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has said.” Here’s more:
“On November 20, the warships of the Caspian Fleet launched 18 cruise missiles at seven targets in the provinces of Raqqa, Idlib and Aleppo. All targets were hit successfully,” he reported to President Vladimir Putin.
Overall, there are 10 warships taking part in the operation, six of which are in the Mediterranean.
Over the past four days, Russian air forces have conducted 522 sorties, deploying more than 100 cruise missiles and 1,400 tons of bombs of various types, the minister stated.
He added that a strike on a target in Deir ez-Zor utilizing multiple cruise missiles had killed more than 600 militants.
Note that Paris attack mastermind Abdelhamid Abaaoud was Emir of War in Deir ez-Zor.
Having thus set the stage, we bring you a buffet of new footage showing all three strategic bomber variants in action as well as footage of the cruise missile strikes.
Bonus: the following clips purport to show the missiles hitting Idlib…
- In China, Money Is Power… Literally
While recent market turmoil in China has meant the government has been burning through its cash reserves at a record pace, for the electric utility plant in Yancheng; money is quite literally power as 3 billion yuan of outdated or damaged bank-notes are incinerated to generate electricity for Jiangsu province each and every year...
Out with the old, in with the new: 3 billion yuan in outdated notes burned to provide electricity
With the long-awaited introduction last week of China's crisp, new 100-yuan notes, you might catch yourself wondering, just where is all that old cash going?
Some Chinese reporters asked themselves the very same question and it turns out that they are going up in flames.
A photoseries published earlier today shows the steps that it takes to efficiently turn money into power. A truck first arrives at the electric power plant in Yancheng, Jiangsu province, filled with 3 billion yuan ($470 million) in outdated and damaged banknotes. The notes are divided into chunks by denomination. Each chunk is worth around 30,000 yuan.
The chunks are first shredded into confetti and then mixed together with straw. The cash and straw then go together on a conveyor belt toward their doom inside an incinerator.
An employee of the power company told reporters that each of these trucks carries 30 tons of banknotes and that they usually burn around 1,800 tons each and every year.
Doing a little math, he said that 30 tons of cash generates 30,000 kWh, which is enough to provide electricity to a household for 300 months. Not like you can take it with you.
- Guest Post: Ending Blowback Terrorism
Authored by Jeffrey Sachs, originally posted at Project Syndicate,
Terrorist attacks on civilians, whether the downing over Sinai of a Russian aircraft killing 224 civilian passengers, the horrific Paris massacre claiming 129 innocent lives, or the tragic bombing in Ankara that killed 102 peace activists, are crimes against humanity. Their perpetrators – in this case, the Islamic State (ISIS) – must be stopped. Success will require a clear understanding of the roots of this ruthless network of jihadists.
Painful as it is to admit, the West, especially the United States, bears significant responsibility for creating the conditions in which ISIS has flourished. Only a change in US and European foreign policy vis-à-vis the Middle East can reduce the risk of further terrorism.
The recent attacks should be understood as “blowback terrorism”: a dreadful unintended result of repeated US and European covert and overt military actions throughout the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and Central Asia that aimed to overthrow governments and install regimes compliant with Western interests. These operations have not only destabilized the targeted regions, causing great suffering; they have also put populations in the US, the European Union, Russia, and the Middle East at significant risk of terror.
The public has never really been told the true history of Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda, or the rise of ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Starting in 1979, the CIA mobilized, recruited, trained, and armed Sunni young men to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The CIA recruited widely from Muslim populations (including in Europe) to form the Mujahideen, a multinational Sunni fighting force mobilized to oust the Soviet infidel from Afghanistan.
Bin Laden, from a wealthy Saudi family, was brought in to help lead and co-finance the operation. This was typical of CIA operations: relying on improvised funding through a wealthy Saudi family and proceeds from local smuggling and the narcotics trade.
By promoting the core vision of a jihad to defend the lands of Islam (Dar al-Islam) from outsiders, the CIA produced a hardened fighting force of thousands of young men displaced from their homes and stoked for battle. It is this initial fighting force – and the ideology that motivated it – that today still forms the basis of the Sunni jihadist insurgencies, including ISIS. While the jihadists’ original target was the Soviet Union, today the “infidel” includes the US, Europe (notably France and the United Kingdom), and Russia.
At the end of the 1980s, with the Soviet retreat from Afghanistan, some elements of the Mujahideen morphed into Al Qaeda, Arabic for “the base,” which referred to the military facilities and training grounds in Afghanistan built for the Mujahideen by bin Laden and the CIA. After the Soviet withdrawal, the term Al Qaeda shifted meaning from the specific military base to the organizational base of jihadist activities.
Blowback against the US began in 1990 with the first Gulf War, when the US created and expanded its military bases in the Dar al-Islam, most notably in Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam’s founding and holiest sites. This expanded US military presence was anathema to the core jihadist ideology that the CIA had done so much to foster.
America’s unprovoked war on Iraq in 2003 unleashed the demons. Not only was the war itself launched on the basis of CIA lies; it also aimed to create a Shia-led regime subservient to the US and anathema to the Sunni jihadists and the many more Sunni Iraqis who were ready to take up arms. More recently, the US, France, and the UK toppled Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya, and the US worked with the Egyptian generals who ousted the elected Muslim Brotherhood government. In Syria, following President Bashar al-Assad’s violent suppression of peaceful public protests in 2011, the US, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and other regional allies helped to foment a military insurgency that has pushed the country into a downward spiral of chaos and violence.
Such operations have failed – repeatedly and frequently disastrously – to produce legitimate governments or even rudimentary stability. On the contrary, by upending established, albeit authoritarian, governments in Iraq, Libya, and Syria, and destabilizing Sudan and other parts of Africa deemed hostile to the West, they have done much to fuel chaos, bloodshed, and civil war. It is this turmoil that has enabled ISIS to capture and defend territory in Syria, Iraq, and parts of North Africa.
Three steps are needed to defeat ISIS and other violent jihadists.
First, US President Barack Obama should pull the plug on CIA covert operations. The use of the CIA as a secret army of destabilization has a long, tragic history of failure, all hidden from public view under the agency’s cloak of secrecy. Ending CIA-caused mayhem would go far to staunch the instability, violence, and anti-Western hatred that fuels today’s terrorism.
Second, the US, Russia, and the other permanent members of the United Nations Security Council should immediately stop their infighting and establish a framework for Syrian peace. They have a shared and urgent stake in confronting ISIS; all are victims of the terror. Moreover, military action against ISIS can succeed only with the legitimacy and backing of the UN Security Council.
The UN framework should include an immediate end to the insurgency against Assad that the US, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey have pursued; a Syrian cease-fire; a UN-mandated military force to confront ISIS; and a political transition in Syria dictated not by the US, but by a UN consensus to support a non-violent political reconstruction.
Finally, the long-term solution to regional instability lies in sustainable development. The entire Middle East is beset not only by wars but also by deepening development failures: intensifying fresh water stress, desertification, high youth unemployment, poor educational systems, and other serious blockages.
More wars – especially CIA-backed, Western-led wars – will solve nothing. By contrast, a surge of investment in education, health, renewable energy, agriculture, and infrastructure, financed both from within the region and globally, is the real key to building a more stable future for the Middle East and the world.
- El-Erian Says "The Market Believes Central Banks Are Our Best Friends Forever", Just Don't Show It "Figure 4"
A recurring theme we have covered here over the past few weeks and months (most recently here), is that while stocks have soared since the September lows (first on bad payrolls news suggesting no rate hike, then on a Fed hint a rate hike is imminent, go figure), most other asset classes have ignored the furious rally, and none other more so than junk bonds and ETFs.
This is shown both longer-term:
As well as recently:
And it’s decoupling in the leveraged loan segment too:
And risk is perceived notably “differently” across equity and credit markets:
That is happening even as the yield curve has furiously pancaked, suggesting the Fed is about to commit a major policy error.
But that’s the topic of another post.
For now, we are looking at the one asset class which according to Carl Icahn (who is famously quite short said asset class) remains the canary in the liquidity coalmine, namly junk bonds.
It is here where according to the latest analysis by Citi’s Stephen Antczak things are going from bad to worse, not only in terms of underlying fundamentals (recall that as we showed a week ago, corporate leverage is at record high just as corporate cash flows are declining), but in terms of underlying market liquidity.
In fact, for October Citi calculates that the spread between an illiquid and a liquid junk bond portfolio soared to just shy of 100 bps, the highest in this series’ history, and double the average of 48 bps. Presenting the infamous “Figure 4”:
Liquidity premiums can be meaningful: In the current environment illiquid bonds can offer a sigificant spread premium to more liquid bonds. To illustrate, we created two HY portfolios, one comprised of 100 liquid issues and the other comprised of 100 illiquid bonds. We chose bonds to minimize rating, sector, and maturity differences (and note that we did not include any triple-C, energy, and basic materials CUSIPs, where factors such as potential recovery values may drive valuations more than liquidity).
In Figure 4 we present the spread differences between the two buckets since April, and we see that on average the liquidity premium is 48 bp in HY. We see a significant premium in IG as well (Also noteworthy is that, for both markets, the premium tends to fluctuate dramatically).
For those who have a tough time visualizing the real liquidity in the market, think 80/20, or rather 90/10 – 10% of all bonds account for 90% of the trades with an asymptotic distribution.
Quote Citi: “in Figure 5 we plot the total number of block size trades over the past 3 months by CUSIP in the IG market, sorted from least traded to most traded. We see that the incremental number of trades by CUSIP is quite modest for most issues, but the gap is much, much larger for the most actively traded portion of the market. It’s a small number of bonds that really helps one to behave tactically.“
In other words, if one is long any of the names that comprise 90% of the entire bond market CUSIP universe, good luck liquidating if and when you have to, and good luck hoping to “eat” only a 100 bps spread in pricing, especially if and when the market goes bidless.
But will the junk bond, or any other markets, go bidless as a result of plunging liquidity?
That was the question posed at the Reuters Global Investment Outlook Summit in New York. Here is what the participants said, courtesy of Reuters:
“The reason why volatility is going to be higher … you don’t have this huge blanket of liquidity in the world like you had for the last three or four years,” said Rick Rieder, chief investment officer of fundamental fixed income for BlackRock, which manages $4.5 trillion.
Rieder noted that currency reserves in China were declining after several years of a reserve buildup in the world’s second-biggest economy that had resulted in money entering the U.S. financial markets in “huge size.”
Scarce liquidity, partly as a result of curbs on banks’ ability to take risks and an increase in technology-driven trading, has contributed to events such as the Dow Jones industrial average losing more than 1,000 points in the first few minutes of trading on Aug. 24 and the Treasury market “flash crash” on Oct. 15, 2014.“
There is just not as much two-way flow in the markets as we saw pre-crisis, and I don’t think that’s getting better in 2016,” said Erin Browne, portfolio manager at Point72 Asset Management. “Particularly where the Fed’s going to be raising rates, there is less liquidity in the market, there is the opportunity for more gap risk next year,” she said in reference to the risk of sudden declines in prices, and with it, sharp widening in bid-ask spreads.
And if SAC, pardon “Point72” is worried about liquidity risk, well… that means that Citi’s “Figure 4” is about to get much worse.
So what is one to do? According to Mohamed el-Erian, prayer to the Fed works: the same Fed which is about to take away the liquidity…
Some investors remain under the illusion that the Fed is going to reassure markets during periods of distress, said Mohamed El-Erian, chief economic adviser at Allianz SE.
“The market is comfortable that whenever we hit a hiccup, the Fed is going to come back in,” he said. “It’s very deeply embedded that central banks are our best friends forever.”
He noted that, even though the U.S. central bank “wants to” normalize rates, people have expressed in recent weeks that they still believe that the Fed will engage in another round of quantitative easing. He reiterated, however, that low liquidity remained a risk and that there was a 30 percent probability of a U.S. recession in 2017.
… just to give it right back when the next rerun of the August 24 market-wide flash crash arrives, only this time there is no subsequent rebound and everyone comes crying to Aunt Janet to make it all well again and unleaseh NIRP or QE4, or both.
- Current Copper Price Below Cost of Production
By EconMatters
Long Dollar TradeOne of the common trades in financial markets these days is going long the US Dollar and shorting Commodities, especially the precious and industrial metals. This has been a bad year for commodities, and this trade has picked up steam with large fund flows the last 6 weeks.Schizophrenic Fed & Employment ReportsThis all turned around after the poor employment report of October 2nd, followed by some trade unwinding thinking the Federal Reserve may be on hold for the remainder of the year after the dismal October Employment Report. This resulted in about eight days of currency unwinds and around October 14th, Investors started putting the Long Dollar Trade back on as they realized the Fed still wanted to raise rates, and since China seemed to stabilize from a crashing standpoint, Fed Speak became hawkish to telegraph to financial markets that the December meeting was a potential live meeting for a rate rise. This trade really picked up speed when the November 6th Employment Report came in much stronger than anticipated with a robust 271,000 new jobs created for the previous month.
Trading Algos & Paper MarketsOil has also been hit along with the metals but it has inventory issues to contend with and is in the midst of a price war for market share. But there is no such price war in the metals industry, and although China`s weakness has no doubt tempered demand, the precious and industrial metals are basically being hammered down in the paper markets by fund flows in this Long Dollar Trade. This trade has become such a reflexive trade, that if the US Dollar is strong, the trading algos just start attacking Gold, Silver, Copper, Aluminum, Platinum and Palladium. These metals by and large trade as a group with slight differences in the charts based upon any unique demand characteristics of the given metal.
Soft DemandDemand hasn`t really fluctuated much for any of these metals the last six weeks, China and the global economy are just sort of trudging along with China`s rebalancing and the global economy growing somewhere in the area of 3.5%. But what has changed the last 6 weeks is the large fund flows into the US Dollar all trying to front run the Federal Reserve, and shorting the Euro, (which makes up the largest component in the US Dollar Index), with traders also front running Mario Draghi who has been telegraphing more future stimulus for the European Union.
No Shale Technology for Copper MiningBut at some point every asset has a price, it really comes down to price, markets often over shoot in one direction or the other, but ultimately, what is a ‘fair price’ given the dynamics in the market. Copper is an interesting market because it is being slammed down with Gold and Oil, and the supply side of the Copper market has had its issues in 2015, with supply constraints limiting new supply on the market. Most of the pressures have come from the demand side of the equation with China`s rebalancing. But Copper doesn`t grow on trees, and is actually rather difficult to get out of the ground and process from a cost perspective. The steps involved in actually processing Copper to get it in a marketable form are rather extensive and involve considerable resources. And with six straight weeks of slamming down by traders we have reached the low level of $2 on the Nymex December Futures contract.
Marginal versus Production Processing CostsThere are various estimates for what the Marginal Cost of getting Copper out of the ground is before supply is taken offline completely. But it is reasonable to assume that Copper is currently being priced well below the long term Production Cost of Processing the Industrial Metal, and a large component for this trend is strictly fund flows in the Long Dollar Trade.
Path Forward for CopperI am not sure how much this trade has left in it for the near term, who literally knows with asset prices and financial markets these days. But my intuition is that this Long Dollar Trade will probably be pushed into the European Central Bank Decision regarding more stimulus measures and the Fed December Meetings regarding a 25 basis point hike. Also, two other contributing factors are the December 4th Employment Report and traders wanting to take profits before the actual event in early December.
Buy the Rumor, Sell the NewsAnd given the fact that the Federal Reserve is probably going to go out of its way to talk dovish with a 25 basis point rate hike, almost a “One and Done” intended messaging given what the rest of the world is doing in this robust currency devaluation game; it probably means that traders buy the rumor, and sell the US Dollar hard after the actual news of a rate hike, at least in the near term.
Short Covering RallyThis is when traders will probably really unwind these Fund Flows with buying Gold hand over fist, covering the substantial shorts in the market, and simultaneously putting new money to work in Gold and the rest of the Industrial and Precious Metals. And if it starts getting cold Oil might even get a bid along with these commodities. We shall see how this all plays out in the market, but $2 Copper could be setting up for an ample short covering rally before 2015 ends!© EconMatters All Rights Reserved | Facebook | Twitter | Free Email | Kindle
- Chicago's John Hancock Building Fire Is Out, Police Report 1 Injured
A fire burning in a residence on the 50th floor of the John Hancock Center in Chicago has been put out according to the city’s fire department. At least 6 ambulances were on scene responding to the initial situation. One injury has been confirmed by the Chicago Fire Department via Twitter.
The infamous John Hancock building in Chicago is on fire. CNN reports, and the following tweets show, flames visible halfway up and enormous plumes of smoke amid the freezing Illinois air. The fire is in the northeast corner of what appears to be the 50th floor of the building. No details yet on the cause or of any injuries…
AP reports,
A fire has broken out high up in the John Hancock Center, one of Chicago's tallest skyscrapers.
Flames could be seen shooting out of a window on the 50th floor Saturday.
Chicago police say they were getting calls reporting the blaze from people inside the building. It has offices and residential units, along with a rooftop observation room popular with tourists.
It's not clear whether anyone is hurt.
The Fire Department's media office tweeted that the fire was under control and firefighters were ventilating the floor. A Fire Department spokesman could not immediately be reached to provide more details.
* * *Authorities have shut down Michigan Avenue, which will be holding the Magnificent Mile Festival of Lights Parade Saturday evening.
Images from the scene…
CFD on scene of 50th floor blaze at the Hancock. Tune to @WBBMNewsradio for latest. Photo: @TheRealTBlake pic.twitter.com/0uYLcYGJgd
— Brad Edwards (@tvbrad) November 21, 2015
#hancocktower #chicago @ABC7Chicago @SchulteABC7 pic.twitter.com/eubY8eVIPk
— Chris DosSantos (@cdossantos5) November 21, 2015
John Hancock on fire pic.twitter.com/jqIuNTH241
— TheProShow (@NicoThePro) November 21, 2015
NEW > fire in #Hancock tower #Chicago Pic via @cdossantos5 pic.twitter.com/mhCUGbDK7S
— John Fricke (@JohnFricke) November 21, 2015
Casually in Chicago and the Hancock building is on fire pic.twitter.com/IZq5aNrbMo
— Samantha Wright (@_SamanthaRenee) November 21, 2015
- Recovery? "We Never Came Close"
Economics is messy, rarely offering up a clear view of the economy. The chart below shows that Americans have taken on more revolving debt (credit cards basically) since March than they did the previous three years combined.
As Alhambra's Joe Calhoun notes, this could be a positive or a negative and we won’t know until some time in the future.
- It could be a reflection of confident consumers, readily taking on debt in an improving economy.
- Or it could be that consumers are using their credit cards because they don’t have cash and this is a precursor to recession.
That’s what happened in 2000 and 2007 but pointing that out these days gets you labeled a perma-bear. That might be a clue as to how one ought to interpret the data… but maybe not.
The Fed has many problems with its attempt to convince the world that it has itself fulfilled its recovery mission. That self-reflected “mandate” is meant to include a masterful revisit to prior American infatuation with debt and credit. There was no more visible and visceral demonstration of those terms than the middle 2000’s, and it is the intent of monetary policy to get Americans back there. However, as Jeffrey Snider explains, in 2015, however, in the few areas where that has been found it does not identify monetary success but rather demonstrates even more how the theory never came close.
Revolving credit has just surged this year, particularly starting in March. The numbers are staggering, as revolving credit balances, estimated and reported by the Federal Reserve itself, have jumped by more than $39 billion in the seven months ending with the update for September. By comparison, from the start of 2012 until February 2015, revolving credit balances expanded by about $44 billion; in just seven months this year consumers have indebted themselves by almost as much as they had in the more than three years before March.
Economists are, as you would expect, nearly ecstatic over the impoverishment. To them, it signals the final capitulation of consumers to that which Janet Yellen has been professing since her term began. But there is a huge problem with that view; if consumers are borrowing, what are they doing with the balances?
For the first time in at least a decade, imports fell in both September and October at each of the three busiest U.S. seaports, according to data from trade researcher Zepol Corp. analyzed by The Wall Street Journal. Combined, imports at the container terminals at the ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, Calif. and around New York harbor, which handle just over half of the goods entering the country by sea, fell by just over 10% between August and October.
The declines came during a stretch from late summer to early fall known in the transportation world as peak shipping season, when cargo volumes typically surge through U.S. ports. It is a crucial few months for the U.S. economy as well: High import volumes can signal a confident view on the economy among retailers and manufacturers, while fears of a slowdown grow when ports are quiet.
The mainstream wishes to belittle the “manufacturing recession” as if it is in and of itself with no major economic connotations. Further, we know retail sales have been among the worst in the entire quarter-century of data, “bested” in consumer atrocity only by the depths of the Great Recession, in exactly this period where revolving, credit card usage has spiked.
It isn’t just importations, either, though that already confounds orthodox understanding as far as what should be happening in trade because of the relative “cheapness” via the dollar exchange. Trucking and shipping companies internally have been vocal in their questioning the dominant, happy rhetoric. In short, if consumers are in full indebted throat upon an orthodox rebirth of the mid-2000’s there isn’t anything out in the real economy to suggest it. There aren’t swelling quantities of goods being moved, fewer in fact, and even less as far as counted spending. There has been a tendency to suggest that consumers, if avoiding goods, have been binging upon services, but they sure aren’t going to be using their credit cards to pay their health insurance premiums or bank fees.
Instead, this discontinuity can only be consistent where consumers are completely out of options. If there are noticeably fewer goods being shipped here and within here, the US, and borrowing has just exploded at the same exact time then it is rather easy to conclude far more of full recession than recovery.
That is a point that is further bolstered by the continuing surge in auto loans (as well as student loans via the federal government). In other words, overall manufacturing is, to be blunt, already in the toilet to which even economists recognize despite the fact that auto credit remains at the heart of a relatively robust auto sector; what does that say about the real nastiness in manufacturing apart from autos? What does it suggest about consumers where student loans aren’t being applied toward the labor participation problem?
As it is, economists still can’t make any sense of it since they are convinced (though becoming, significantly enough, less so as you can see below) of Yellen’s forthrightness.
Economists are divided as to whether the peak season slump signals a short-term hiccup for the U.S. economy, or marks the start of a sustained period of weakness.
Some say the slump is being driven by businesses that have cut back on imports because of a weak economic outlook, which could point to sluggish global growth ahead. Others say it is a side effect of a massive inventory buildup that took place earlier in the year.
Those are actually two parts of the same process, not competing explanations. If businesses have indeed started to cut back, then inventory is the marginal driving force derived from lower sales that have driven inventory to such heights. Add to that such “sluggish” outlook the indebting nature of consumers just to keep the economy in a bad state rather than something obviously worse and it is no wonder commodities and money markets are speaking to unthinkable contradiction.
In short, there is no way to reconcile the sudden surge in credit card usage with this magnitude of reduced trade in goods that ends with the US on a surging plane of booming vigor. The “dollar” warned of such behavior and inconsistency starting in the middle of last year, and come to find out the pieces are fitting and corroborating that warning more and more.
- US Congresswoman Introduces Bill To Stop "Illegal" War On Assad; Says CIA Ops Must Stop
Last month, US Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard went on CNN and laid bare Washington’s Syria strategy.
In a remarkably candid interview with Wolf Blitzer, Gabbard calls Washington’s effort to oust Assad “counterproductive” and “illegal” before taking it a step further and accusing the CIA of arming the very same terrorists who The White House insists are “sworn enemies.”
In short, Gabbard all but tells the American public that the government is lying to them and may end up inadvertently starting “World War III.”
For those who missed it, here’s the clip:
That was before Paris.
Well, in the wake of the attacks, Gabbard has apparently had just about enough of Washington vacillating in the fight against terror just so the US can ensure that ISIS continues to destabilize Assad and now, with bi-partisan support, the brazen Hawaii Democrat has introduced legislation to end the “illegal war” to overthrow Assad.
Gabbard, who fought in Iraq – twice – has partnered with Republican Adam Scott on the bill. Here’s AP:
In an unusual alliance, a House Democrat and Republican have teamed up to urge the Obama administration to stop trying to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad and focus all its efforts on destroying Islamic State militants.
Reps. Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat, and Austin Scott, a Republican, introduced legislation on Friday to end what they called an “illegal war” to overthrow Assad, the leader of Syria accused of killing tens of thousands of Syrian citizens in a more than four-year-old civil war entangled in a battle against IS extremists, also known as ISIS.
“The U.S. is waging two wars in Syria,” Gabbard said. “The first is the war against ISIS and other Islamic extremists, which Congress authorized after the terrorist attack on 9/11. The second war is the illegal war to overthrow the Syrian government of Assad.”
Scott said, “Working to remove Assad at this stage is counter-productive to what I believe our primary mission should be.”
Since 2013, the CIA has trained an estimated 10,000 fighters, although the number still fighting with so-called moderate forces is unclear. CIA-backed rebels in Syria, who had begun to put serious pressure on Assad’s forces, are now under Russian bombardment with little prospect of rescue by their American patrons, U.S. officials say.
For years, the CIA effort had foundered — so much so that over the summer, some in Congress proposed cutting its budget. Some CIA-supported rebels had been captured; others had defected to extremist groups.
Gabbard complained that Congress has never authorized the CIA effort, though covert programs do not require congressional approval, and the program has been briefed to the intelligence committees as required by law, according to congressional aides who are not authorized to be quoted discussing the matter.
Gabbard contends the effort to overthrow Assad is counter-productive because it is helping IS topple the Syrian leader and take control of all of Syria. If IS were able to seize the Syrian military’s weaponry, infrastructure and hardware, the group would become even more dangerous than it is now and exacerbate the refugee crisis.
And make no mistake, Tulsi’s understanding of Washington’s absurd Mid-East policy goes far beyond Syria. That is, Gabbard fully grasps the big picture as well. Here’s what she has to say about the idea that the US should everywhere and always attempt to overthrow regimes when human rights groups claim there’s evidence of oppression:
“People said the very same thing about Saddam (Hussein), the very same thing about (Moammar) Gadhafi, the results of those two failed efforts of regime change and the following nation-building have been absolute, not only have they been failures, but they’ve actually worked to strengthen our enemy.”
Somebody get Langley on the phone, this woman must be stopped.
Here’s Gabbard speaking to CNN this week about Assad:
So there’s hope for the US public after all.
Perhaps if the clueless masses won’t listen to “lunatic” fringe blogs or Sergei Lavrov, they’ll listen to a US Congresswoman who served two tours of duty in Iraq and who is now telling Americans that The White House, The Pentagon, and most especially the CIA are together engaged in an “illegal” effort to overthrow the government of a sovereign country and in the process are arming the very same extremists that are attacking civilians in places like Paris.
Good luck Tulsi, and thanks for proving that there’s at least one person inside that Beltway that isn’t either dishonest or naive.
* * *
From Gabbard
“Here are 10 reasons the U.S. must end its war to overthrow the Syrian government of Assad:
- Because if we succeed in overthrowing the Syrian government of Assad, it will open the door for ISIS, al-Qaeda, and other Islamic extremists to take over all of Syria. There will be genocide and suffering on a scale beyond our imagination. These Islamic extremists will take over all the weaponry, infrastructure, and military hardware of the Syrian army and be more dangerous than ever before.
- We should not be allying ourselves with these Islamic extremists by helping them achieve their goal because it is against the security interests of the United States and all of civilization.
- Because the money and weapons the CIA is providing to overthrow the Syrian government of Assad are going directly or indirectly into the hands of the Islamic extremist groups, including al-Qaeda affiliates, al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham, and others who are the actual enemies of the United States. These groups make up close to 90 percent of the so-called opposition forces, and are the most dominant fighters on the ground.
- Because our efforts to overthrow Assad has increased and will continue to increase the strength of ISIS and other Islamic extremists, thus making them a bigger regional and global threat.
- Because this war has exacerbated the chaos and carnage in Syria and, along with the terror inflicted by ISIS and other Islamic extremist groups fighting to take over Syria, continues to increase the number of Syrians forced to flee their country.
- Because we should learn from our past mistakes in Iraq and Libya that U.S. wars to overthrow secular dictators (Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi) cause even more chaos and human suffering and open the door for Islamic extremists to take over in those countries.
- Because the U.S. has no credible government or government leader ready to bring order, security, and freedom to the people of Syria.
- Because even the ‘best case’ scenario—that the U.S. successfully overthrows the Syrian government of Assad—would obligate the United States to spend trillions of dollars and the lives of American service members in the futile effort to create a new Syria. This is what we have been trying to do in Iraq for twelve years, and we still have not succeeded. The situation in Syria will be much more difficult than in Iraq.
- Because our war against the Syrian government of Assad is interfering with our being one-pointedly focused on the war to defeat ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and the other Islamic extremists who are our actual enemy.
- Because our war to overthrow the Assad government puts us in direct conflict with Russia and increases the likelihood of war between the United States and Russia and the possibility of another world war.”
* * *
Oh, and if you needed another reason to like Tulsi, here’s a bonus 40 second clip for your amusement…
- Mission Accomplished?
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