Month: October 2019

Submitted by Michael Every, Senior Strategist at Rabobank

LOL-A-PLAZA

Summary:

• The US is reportedly weighing a bilateral currency accord with China as part of a trade agreement
• Our trade scepticism also holds if we focus just on the purported currency accord
• The US will insist on China committing to a stable or stronger CNY
• This is unworkable against the current US-China dynamic and economic fundamentals
• China also knows the lesson of the Plaza Accord very well and is very unlikely to repeat it
• And how would this even be enforced?

Bilateral currency accord?

Alongside the current round of US-China trade talks there has been a report that the US is now weighing a bilateral currency accord as part of the potential agreement.

Bloomberg news reports the proposed currency accord, which it says the US claims China had agreed to earlier this year before trade talks broke down, would be part of a “first-phase agreement” that could potentially also see a further delay in planned tariff hikes on USD250bn of Chinese exports from 25% to 30% currently scheduled for 15 October. This first-phase would then supposedly be followed by more negotiations on problematic core issues like intellectual property and forced technology transfers.

We have written at length about US-China trade talks before from a number of angles, and we remain sceptical that any real deal can be done. (See here and here and here for examples.) Indeed, with tensions rising between the US and China on a number of fronts, from trade to technology to sport, the likelihood of a trade deal is now openly perceived by markets to be declining. However, that does not rule out the possibility of a short-term can-kicking exercise until the next US election – though that is far from a given too.

Notably, our scepticism also holds if we focus just on the purported currency accord now being floated.

Or discord?

Recall that back in August, the Trump administration formally declared China a currency manipulator for the first time, a major psychological step if not immediately opening the door to any US action. Moreover, Trump has repeatedly made public in Tweets his view that China’s currency is too weak (and, conversely, that the USD is too strong.)

As such, it should be obvious that what the US will be insisting on in any currency accord is China committing to keeping the CNY stable, or even perhaps to strengthening it. Indeed, Bloomberg reports that “according to people familiar with the currency language”, the proposed pact largely resembles what the US has already agreed to in The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which has not yet been ratified by Congress.

The USMCA includes provisions forbidding member states from participating in currency manipulation. Article 33.4 of Chapter 33 states each Party should:

(a) achieve and maintain a market-determined exchange rate regime;

(b) refrain from competitive devaluation, including through intervention in the foreign exchange market; and

(c) strengthen underlying economic fundamentals, which reinforces the conditions for macroeconomic and exchange rate stability.

The ABC of weak CNY

From all three perspectives, this is likely to prove unworkable in terms of the US-China currency dynamic. Let’s show why:

Achieve and maintain a market-determined exchange rate regime.

It is widely-known that China does not yet have a market-determined exchange rate. Every day markets have to wait for the PBOC fix to be announced at 9:15am, and trading is only allowed within a +/-2% band on either side of that fix. Moreover, a “counter-cyclical factor” allows the PBOC to set the fix where it sees fit, rather than following the daily market close; and, daily trading rarely comes anywhere close to those limits given there is always a Chinese counterparty involved. China’s closed capital account also allows it huge influence over the currency.

Crucially, if China were to now switch to a genuinely market-determined exchange rate regime, CNY would collapse. That is one of the key reasons why it does NOT have a market-determined exchange rate regime!

That much should be obvious given three simple factors.

1. CNY has been trending lower for years now;
2. Far more local funds would wish to diversify into other currencies than foreign funds would wish to hold CNY; underlined by the next point that
3. The constant expansion in CNY liquidity relative to holdings of USD (see Figure 1 below).

Note that the chart above actually flatters the growth in CNY money-supply because it is translated into USD, against which CNY has been depreciating. Without that, the divergence would be even more extreme. Which leads us to the next point.

Refrain from competitive devaluation, including through intervention in the foreign exchange market.

If China stepped back from its structural intervention, it would see CNY weaken very significantly. We believe something in the order of 25% would be entirely possible. Indeed, our medium-term (two-year) CNY forecast is that this will transpire for various reasons.

However, the US is not likely to recognise that Chinese currency weakness is a reflection of its own poor policy choices: in the current political environment, it will instead no doubt cry “competitive devaluation!”

Strengthen underlying economic fundamentals, which reinforces the conditions for macroeconomic and exchange rate stability.

The only forms of economic reforms that could strengthen China’s fundamentals such that the currency would remain stable or strengthen would be those that would prompt a huge increase in foreign capital inflows.

While China has long maintained that this is exactly what it wants to see, there has been no sign at all of a genuine deregulation and opening up of the Chinese markets to attract that kind of business capital. Rather, the de facto role of the state appears to be increasing steadily rather than decreasing.

Indeed, where China is perhaps opening up there is a major caveat: its move to a new Social Credit System from 2020 onwards–which will also apply to foreign corporate entities–is seen as an attempt to guide their behaviour. That issue is suddenly even more controversial following the escalating political spat between Beijing and the US National Basketball Association.

Notably, the White House has openly cheer-led the sharp move in supply chains out of China alongside the US-China trade war: yet this does not support a stable or stronger CNY.

Of course, China is eager to see an inflow of US financial capital into its bond and equity markets – and this had appeared to offer a bullish case for CNY. However, the Trump administration is apparently pushing ahead with steps to limit that inflow happening too.

While there are arguably compelling geostrategic reasons for the White House to limit pension flows to China, that also does not support a stable or stronger CNY. In short, the ABC of CNY is that it will weaken ahead regardless of any currency accord.

Capital letters

You will notice that the previous analysis focused only on the capital account and not on the current and trade account. That is for good reason.

A look at China’s balance of payments in Figure 2 above shows that the capital account (KA) and Errors and Omissions (E&O) are both in deficit – and the latter arguably represents capital flight that speaks to the points we just made about Chinese desires for FX diversification, and hence a weaker CNY.

China’s primary and secondary income balance is basically zero (no big remittance inflows, or debt repayments, etc.) However, China runs a large services deficit. While this is officially tourism, one can again argue that part of it is also capital flight. Even if it isn’t, it seems hard to imagine the net flow of tourists in and out of China rapidly changing. (Although it IS possible to imagine the tourist outflow stopping, either for political reasons, or to conserve FX if needed!)

Most importantly, the one item keeping China’s balance of payments in surplus overall, and thus keeping CNY stable, is the trade account. (Though again, we suspect over-reporting of imports and under-reporting of exports is taking place regularly, and still to facilitate capital flight.)

So far so good for China: trade is healthy despite the trade war!

Yet if one looks behind the aggregate figure at the breakdown of exactly who provides that net USD trade surplus (see Figure 3), one sees very clearly that problems lie ahead. Specifically, China runs a trade deficit with the rest of the world (ROW) and surpluses with the EU and–above all–the US, which provided 75% of China’s 12-month rolling USD trade surplus as of August.

Isn’t the goal of any US-China trade deal meant to be the US narrowing its huge trade deficit with China? If so, then absent China swamping the EU with goods to replace the ‘lost’ US market, which the sluggish EU economy makes unlikely, then a US-China trade deal means a weaker CNY regardless of the currency-accord wrapper.

That’s logically even more the case if the US expects China to keep a strong CNY and hence try to take some of the strain as the global consumer of last resort, as the US has for so long.

As we have hopefully already shown, China simply is not set up that way. China’s economic model is, at root, to pump in massive local liquidity aided by financial repression, all behind a protective capital account firewall, consequently over-invest and under-consume, and then export its excess output to the world. Moving away from that paradigm without serious pain is almost impossible to achieve.

If China’s trade balance were to swing into deficit at the same time as every other area is in deficit, and if the US won’t allow FDI and capital inflows to mirror that dollar outflow, or if foreign firms don’t want to go into China of their own accord, then China will face a balance of payments crisis…and a much weaker CNY to counter-balance.

Yes, China might be willing to sign up to the US’ proposed currency accord; and it might really want a stable or stronger currency; but against this backdrop, it isn’t going to be possible. Even if there is the will, there is no way.

LOL-A-PLAZA!

Moreover, is there really the Chinese will?

Those with longer market memories might recall that in 1985 the US, which was even then running a large trade deficit, forced Japan into the Plaza Accord, whereby the JPY was revalued significantly higher vs. USD (see Figure 4). USD/JPY moved from over 250 to around 120 in a very short space of time. Japan, which both relied on the US market and the US defence umbrella, had no choice but to agree. However, the outcome of that decision was hugely negative for it.

In order to deal with the sudden shift away from an investment- and export-led economy, Japan decided to embrace a property bubble (see Figure 5). As such, it continued to over-invest (GFCF below) even as it no longer exported (NX) so much. GDP growth continued to be rapid for a while, and at the end of 1980s there were as many financial market articles talking about the ‘inevitable’ Japanese dominance of the US and global economy as there are about China today.

Then the bubble burst – and the Japanese economy has never recovered its dynamism in any area, including private and government consumption expenditures (PCE and GCE, respectively).

Notably, China knows the lessons of the Plaza Accord very well and is very unlikely to repeat them. That being said, there is a strong argument to make that is has actually repeated exactly the same error already in the form of the property bubble it has blown to try to maintain growth in the economy since 2008!

Regardless, it seems extremely unlikely that Beijing would want to see CNY move higher, like JPY did; and especially not to please the US and allow it to export more to it, relatively.

Crucially, one also has to ask: even if a deal were struck, how would this be enforced? Is China really going to allow the US to monitor its economy and markets, and to act on tariffs based on its own interpretation of what China is or isn’t doing on the FX front? Would any economy, let alone China(!), sign up for that kind of erosion of sovereignty?

In short, we think the idea of a new Plaza Accord in this global environment is laughable: LOL-A-PLAZA! Indeed, there is most unlikely to be any harmony ahead on the currency front, nor any US-China concert.

There has been much speculation since it was revealed that the CIA employee who lodged a whistleblower complaint over President Trump’s request that Ukraine investigate former Vice President Joe Biden had a “professional relationship with one of the 2020 candidates.”

As the Washington Examiner‘s Byron York reported, a source told him that:

“The IG said [the whistleblower] worked or had some type of professional relationship with one of the Democratic candidates.”

And now, as The Washington Examiner reports, according to intelligence officers and former White House officials, the 2020 Democratic candidate with whom the CIA whistleblower had a “professional” tie is Joe Biden.

A retired CIA officer told the Washington Examiner, “From everything we know about the whistleblower and his work in the executive branch then, there is absolutely no doubt he would have been working with Biden when he was vice president.”

A former Trump administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, told The Washington Examiner that Biden’s work on foreign affairs brought him into close proximity with the whistleblower either at the CIA or when he was detailed to the White House.

“This person, after working with Biden, may feel defensive towards him because he feels [Biden] is being falsely attacked. Maybe he is even talking to Biden’s staff,” the former official said. “Maybe it is innocent, maybe not.”

So, to clarify, a registered Democrat on the CIA payroll, who previously worked with VP Joe Biden, went to Adam Schiff’s committee, who referred him to a Democratic operative attorney, who helped him file a whistleblower complaint about Trump attempting to uncover Biden’s corruption, on a form which was altered to allow second-hand information. 

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

Farmers in the middle of the country are about to get hit by what could potentially be the worst October blizzard in U.S. history.  According to USA Today, “the massive size and intensity of this snowstorm is unheard of for October”. 

In other words, we have never seen anything like this in the month of October ever before.  Such a storm would have been disastrous enough in a normal year, but this has definitely not been a normal year for Midwest farmers.  As I detailed extensively in previous articles, endless rain and horrific flooding made planting season a complete and utter nightmare for many Midwest farmers this year.  Millions of acres did not get planted at all, and planting was seriously delayed on tens of millions of other acres.  As a result, corn, soybeans and other crops are simply not ready to be harvested in many parts of the Midwest, and now an unprecedented winter storm is barreling directly toward our heartland.

This is a very, very serious situation.  Normally, most corn in the Dakotas and Minnesota is considered to be “mature” by now, but this year we are facing a completely different scenario.

According to the latest USDA Crop Progress Report, only 22 percent of the corn in North Dakota is considered to be “mature” at this point…

Many farmers continue to wait on the sidelines to get into the fields. With freezing temperatures, heavy snowfall, and high winds set to hit the northern Plains this week, the corn in North Dakota is only 22% mature vs. a 75% five-year average, according to Monday’s USDA Crop Progress Report.

Also, South Dakota corn is rated 36% mature vs. an 80% five-year average. Minnesota farmers have a corn crop that is just 39% mature vs. an 83% five-year average.

And now here comes an “all-out blizzard”.

In case you are wondering, I am not the one that put such an extreme label on this storm.  In fact, Accuweather is specifically using that term to describe this historic storm…

An unusually far-reaching snowstorm for early October will stall, strengthen and evolve into an “all-out blizzard” over the Dakotas and then will send a blast of cold air across much of the Plains and Midwest.

Heavy snow has already fallen on the northern Rockies and was progressing southeastward along with a charge of cold air. Snow and slippery travel were also being reported in parts of Washington state, including around Spokane where new daily snowfall record for Oct. 8 was set. Spokane International Airport recorded 3.3 inches of snow Tuesday, shattering the previous record for the day, which was a trace set in 1981.

It is crazy that Spokane is already getting snow.

According to Yahoo News, that snowfall already makes this the “third-snowiest October” that the city has ever experienced…

Spokane, Washington, was one town that was hit particularly hard by the snow on Tuesday. A record-breaking 3.3 inches of snow fell, the first measurable snow in the month of October since 2001. It also made this month the third-snowiest October on record, following 3.9 inches in October of 1975 and 6.1 inches in October of 1957.

Ultimately, a few inches of snow is not that big of a deal.

But once this storm reaches the middle of the country, it is going to dump up to 2 feet of snow on some of our most important agricultural areas…

A general 6-12 inches is forecast over much of the Dakotas. However, a large swath of 12-24 inches is likely with an AccuWeather Local StormMax™ of 30 inches likely from north-central North Dakota to central and northeastern North Dakota.

Cities that could end up with 2 feet of snow include Bismarck, Jamestown and Devils Lake, North Dakota, as well as Mobridge, South Dakota, and Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Needless to say, that much snow at this time of the year is going to be absolutely devastating for many farmers.

And we are being told that this coming storm actually has “two parts”.  After the first part strikes, the second part is going to come rolling through on Friday and Saturday…

The storm will have two parts, the first of which is targeting the northern and central Rockies and High Plains on Wednesday into Thursday. The second part will bring snow to the eastern and central portions of the Dakotas and western Minnesota by week’s end.

“Near-blizzard to full-fledged blizzard conditions are possible across portions of central North Dakota Friday afternoon into Saturday morning,” the weather service in Bismarck said. “Expect high impacts and dangerous to impossible travel conditions.”

I can’t even imagine how corn and soybean farmers are going to feel once their unharvested fields are buried under two feet of snow.

As I keep warning, weather patterns just continue to become more extreme, and many believe that what we have witnessed so far is just the beginning of our problems.

There is one more thing that I would like to mention before I wrap up this article.

Do you remember the “Perfect Storm” that we witnessed in the Atlantic Ocean back in 1991?  Hollywood made a big movie about it, and that film ended up making more than 300 million dollars worldwide.

Well, according to Accuweather a very similar storm is now developing in roughly the same location…

Interestingly, around the same time in 1991, the “Perfect Storm” was in the making over the western Atlantic Ocean. There are some similarities to the pattern this week with a smaller storm taking shape and stalling just off the mid-Atlantic and New England coasts.

I found this to be particularly interesting, because I wrote an article about “the perfect storm” that is about to hit America just a few days ago.  If you missed it, you can find my article entitled “The Book Is About To Close On The Late Great United States Of America” right here.

We live in truly unprecedented times, and things are about to start getting really crazy out there.

So get prepared for “the perfect storm” while you still can, because time is quickly running out.

After making his now famous “pedo guy” allegation against British cave diver Vern Unsworth, Elon Musk was presented with advice from his top lieutenants on how to restore his image and “clean up”, according to Bloomberg.

Musk (surprise) decided to ignore the advice. 

Sam Teller, a director in the office of the CEO at Tesla, SpaceX, Boring Co. and Neuralink, sought out feedback from executives and lawyers on what Musk should do after making his baseless claims. 

For his efforts, Teller was told by Musk: 

“After sleeping on this, I’m not happy about the suggested approach. It would have been particularly foolish and craven to apologize the night after Tesla’s shares declined, as it would simply have been dismissed as a disingenuous and cowardly attempt to restore the stock price. We need to stop panicking.“

The documents were revealed as part of the ongoing circus that has been Unsworth’s defamation suit against Musk, who referred to himself as a “fucking idiot” for the comments he made about the cave diver. We recently documented Unsworth’s recent opposition to Musk’s motion for dismissal – a document that eviscerated Musk and his defense. 

The documents show that Teller advised Musk on an apology for his behavior after soliciting feedback from SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell, Tesla CFO Deepak Ahuja, Executive Director of the ACLU Anthony Romero and Tesla Director Antonio Gracias, among others. 

Teller suggested Musk address his employees by saying:

 “I understand that my recent behavior has probably embarrassed you and I’m sorry.”

He also suggested Musk tell people he will do his best to “tune out” Twitter critics.

Musk instead decided to apologize via tweets, saying he had “acted in anger”. 

Shortly thereafter, Musk emailed a BuzzFeed reporter not to apologize, but rather to renew his attack on Unsworth. 

Jeff Nesbit, the executive director of Climate Nexus, an environmental communications non-profit, was alarmed by Musk’s attacks: 

“It clearly blew up in his face, for no good reason. One or two more of these and I can guarantee that there will be a no confidence vote on the BOD led by the big institutional investors. And he will not survive such a vote, at least not in the public sphere.”

It was just about month later that Musk tweeted out that he had “funding secured” to take the company private when he didn’t. 

Authored by Vanessa Gu of CGTN,

It used to be that seeing is believing. But deepfake technology, artificial intelligence (AI) technology that can manipulate images, videos and audio to show a person doing or saying something they didn’t do in real life, is challenging that assumption and making it easier than ever.

Deeptrace, a cybersecurity company that specializes in detecting AI-generated synthetic videos, reported a spike in the number of deepfake videos online from 7,964 in December 2018 to 14,678 in July 2019. That’s an 84 percent jump in less than a year.

Analyzing videos from video hosting sites, community forums and deepfake apps, the company said 96 percent were pornographic in nature, often with the computer-generated face of a celebrity replacing that of a real-life adult actor in a sexually explicit scene. It found that the most frequently targeted individuals were actresses from Western countries with South Korean pop singers second and third in line.

The more elusive fake news

Given the proliferation and accessibility of deepfake technology, it is no surprise there’s been a spike in the number of deepfake videos circulating online. Earlier this year, Chinese app Zao went viral for its ability to superimpose selfies onto celebrities in movie scenes. The app takes a series of selfies where users make various facial expressions and digitally transfers it to a movie scene.

While most deepfake apps and software available are mainly for entertainment purposes, there can be severe political ramifications. In Malaysia, sex video clips allegedly involving Economic Affairs Minister Azmin Ali and former Santubong PKR Youth chief Haziq Abdullah Abdul Aziz were leaked through messaging platform WhatsApp. The government has said the videos are deepfakes, but cybersecurity experts have yet to conclusively determine if the videos were doctored.

Governments around the world are rushing to keep up with the burgeoning threat of AI deepfakes. In the U.S., California has enacted a law to ban the distribution of deepfake videos within 60 days of an election. A second ban allows California residents to sue anyone who distributes deepfake pornographic content with their likeness without their consent.

Tech giants take on deepfakes

However, there are questions as to how effective legislation will be given the difficulty in spotting deepfakes in the first place. While there are systems to authenticate a video or image at the point of capture, the rapid evolution of deepfake technology has created an arms race between deepfake creators and those trying to detect videos.

“It’s a cat-and-mouse game. If I design detection for deepfakes, I’m giving the attacker a new discriminator to test against,” Siddharth Garg, an assistant professor of computer engineering at New York University’s Tandon School, told Reuters.

Facebook came under fire this year when an altered video of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi slurring and tripping through a speech was distributed on the platform. Its Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg admitted Facebook was too slow in flagging the video as false. “It took a while for our system to flag the video and for our fact checkers to rate it as false… and during that time it got more distribution than our policies should have allowed,” Zuckerberg said at a conference in Aspen, Colorado.

In the lead up to the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, tech giants like Facebook, Twitter and Google are eager to clamp down on deepfake videos to prevent a repeat of the fake news wildfire in the 2016 election.

Google released a large database of visual deepfakes last month that can be used as benchmarks to determine if a video has been altered. The company produced the database in the hope that it will help researchers build features to remove the videos. Meanwhile, Facebook is teaming up with Microsoft, the Partnership on AI coalition and academics from several universities to launch a contest to better detect deepfakes.

Approximately 62 climate protesters were arrested after supergluing themselves to a lime green boat they parked in a busy Times Square intersection in New York City. The demonstrators donned life jackets painted with slogans, telling police “This is a climate emergency,” when asked to disperse. 

The Thursday morning stunt by environmental activist group Extinction Rebellion (XR) caused two hours of gridlock before the green boat was towed away – after protesters were freed using chemicals. 

Protesters also glued themselves to King’s Bridge – only for one to discover that it isn’t easy to take off a backpack once your hand is stuck to the street. 

BREAKING: Protestors now supergluing themselves to Kings Bridge @9NewsMelb @9NewsAUS pic.twitter.com/jPFvxLslF5

— Sam Cucchiara (@SamCucchiara9) October 9, 2019

Meanwhile, a concurrent XR protest in London snarled traffic at Heathrow, delaying flights as one activist climbed on top of a plane.

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

History is full of ironies, and perhaps it will suit the irony gods for The Donald to take down the Republican Party and the Clinton dynasty to destroy the Democratic Party.

Let’s start by stipulating my bias: I would cheer the collapse of both self-serving, venal political parties, which have stood by for decades as the rich have become immeasurably richer and the politically powerful few have disempowered the many. The transparent “populist” bleatings of both parties–“we serve the people!”–sound increasingly like stale, pathetically disconnected from reality Soviet-era propaganda.

Let’s say I’m a relatively disinterested observer other than my fervent wish that both corrupt, self-serving parties slide into the dustbin of history, the sooner the better.

The Republicans were hijacked by Donald Trump and given a binary choice: accept Trump as their candidate and have a chance of winning, or reject him and guarantee losing. After surveying the wreckage left by the Bush dynasty and Romney’s loss, the Repubs swallowed their distrust and distaste for The Donald and chose winning over losing–the easily predictable choice for all politicos.

The Democrats chose to enact a Greek tragedy featuring off-the-charts hubris. Despite Hillary’s private email server, the Clinton Foundation’s shameless shakedowns for millions of dollars in “contributions” (the polite word for influence peddling), and her delight in mocking those who chose not to vote for her as “deplorables,” the Democrats were supremely confident that the Clinton dynasty would sweep them to an easy and overwhelming victory.

As the Greek dramatists understood, hubris doesn’t just invite disaster, it welcomes disaster. The Democrats were then handed a binary choice: either cast the Clintons adrift with a few provisions and a hearty cheer and move on, or set the course of the Party for the next four years to the Clintons’ Ahab-like obsession: we wuz robbed, and the terrible error of history (Hillary losing the 2016 election) would have to be corrected regardless of the cost.

To aid their mono-maniacal campaign, the Democrats partnered with the most anti-Democratic and corrupting force in America, the alphabet agencies of Imperial Pretensions, the CIA et al., who are institutionally bound to view the citizenry’s right to choose its government and its government’s policies with utter disdain: we rule the Empire, and democracy is only acceptable as long as it rubber-stamps our rule.

This aligned perfectly with the Clinton dynasty’s view, and so the unending campaign to unseat The Donald was launched.

For better or worse, this unholy alliance put the Democratic Party’s legitimacy on the gambling table. The Democratic Party, whether it accepts or understands this reality or not, has devolved to an absurdist cable-channel devoted exclusively to unseating The Donald, regardless of the cost and regardless of the sacrifices required to pursue what is increasingly a quixotically misguided venture.

Wittingly or unwittingly, every institution allied with the Democrats has also put its legitimacy on the gaming table, the most important of which is the mainstream media, including the quasi-public Propaganda Broadcast Service (PBS). The corporate media and PBS have been reduced to late-night TV programming, selling the same flimsy gadgets with the same tired pitch: “But wait–there’s more!”

All of which leads us to the question: will the Clintons destroy the Democratic Party, or perhaps even more saliently: have the Clintons already sealed the fate of the Democratic Party?

We won’t know the voters’ judgment until November 2020, but judging by campaign contributions, the delegitimizing ill-will being generated by the Party’s transparent suppression of Tulsi Gabbard, its Ahab-like obsession with impeachment and its bad-karma reliance on the FBI and CIA’s most treacherous operatives, the Party’s leadership might not hold a winning hand.

History is full of ironies, and perhaps it will suit the irony gods for The Donald to take down the Republican Party and the Clinton dynasty to destroy the Democratic Party.

*  *  *

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A recent local city government meeting in Oak Park — which lies just outside of Chicago, Illinois — devolved into an angry board member silencing her opponents because they have “been white from birth!” The only thing is that trustee Susan Buchanan, who refused to let anyone else speak on the question of rewriting the town’s diversity statement, is herself white.

Buchanan yelled for others to “shut up” concerning the resolution, and wouldn’t let any other town government leader so much as utter a word: “Why are you arguing what is a system of oppression? You’ve never experienced one, so shut up! I don’t want to hear from you!” 

Clip of the Day: Oak Park, Ill. town trustee Susan Buchanan lambastes her colleagues for discussing updating the town’s diversity statement while being white. pic.twitter.com/CzBG2HqpYi

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) October 10, 2019

“You stop it, you are a white male! You stop it! You are a white male! Your skin is light enough!” she shouted while pointing her finger at a fellow council member trying to speak.

A local Chicago news report described the chaotic scene where it appeared Buchanan had a melt-down attempting to silence any “white male” who might offer an opinion on the new resolution before the council:

“Oak Park has a place for everybody,” said Trustee Susan Buchanan.

But a Monday night a discussion on rewriting the village’s diversity statement got heated over some specific words. Those words were: “We work to break down systems of oppression.”

“I hesitate to send the message to our police department that they are a system of oppression,” Moroney said in the meeting.

Moroney clearly frustrated Buchanan.

“You have been white from birth! Why are you arguing, what is a system of oppression? You have never experienced one!” Buchanan said.

As columnist for The American Conservative, Rod Dreher, pointed out, “Oak Park is 68 percent white, and has no minority people on its board of trustees. But it’s got a diversity statement! A super-woke one!”

The heated exchange began after another dissenting trustee, Dan Moroney, said, “I hesitate to send the message to our police department that they are a system of oppression.”

A clip of some of the rest of the “discussion”…

Buchanan then began shouting at the all-white board members (which again, includes herself) for daring to weigh in. At one point she even stuck her finger in the face of  Oak Park’s mayor, a person of color sitting beside her and said, “Your skin is light enough!” — meaning he wasn’t allowed to speak either, apparently.

“You have not spent a day with dark brown skin and tried to walk through this society!” she asserted. 

“I am so tired of hearing two white men tell us what systems of oppression are!” said Buchanan to applause from the audience. “For Christ’s sake, no! You don’t know what systems of oppression are; you haven’t been oppressed,” she said. “This is like if you guys wanted to tell us what it’s like to have a menstrual cycle. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

However, Moroney had acknowledged “Oak Park buys into diversity, equity, and inclusion,” but was concerned over language that would define the city’s own police force and institutions, sworn to protect citizens, as “systems of oppression”. 

Notably, none of the political opponents of the visibly enraged Buchanan themselves responded with anger. 

Instead, one of the trustees is seen at the end of the clip calmly explaining, “I think if we reduce these conversations to ‘nobody cares what you have to say because you’re a white male’ – I don’t think we’re doing this right.”

But ultimately, the new diversity statement passed in a unanimous vote on Monday night, following the spectacle of the board’s ‘wokest’ white woman shouting down the white males. 

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has launched efforts to create a vaccine that would protect people from most flu strains, all at once, with a single shot. This shot would be a DNA-based vaccine that will literally change your body’s DNA.

With mandatory vaccinations increasingly being legislated, this bodes a very dangerous health future. Politicians and Big Pharma are pouring a lot of money into this and at first glance, it may appear that your health and well-being are their concern.  That could not be further from the truth.

Massachusetts Senator and big spender, Ed Markey, has introduced a bill that would shovel no less than a billion dollars toward the universal flu-vaccine project. Here is a sentence from an NIAID press release that mentions one of several research approaches:

“NIAID Vaccine Research Center scientists have initiated Phase 1/2 studies of a universal flu vaccine strategy that includes an investigational DNA-based vaccine (called a DNA ‘prime’)…” –Technocracy.News

This is horrifying if you know what the phrase “DNA vaccine” means. It refers to what the experts are touting as the next generation of immunizations. Instead of injecting a piece of a virus into a person, in order to stimulate the immune system, synthesized genes would be shot into the body. This isn’t traditional vaccination anymore. It’s gene therapy.

In any such method, where genes are edited, deleted,  or added to living organisms, there are always “unintended consequences.” These vaccines will permanently alter your DNA.  Once injected, there’s no going back either.

The reference is the New York Times, 3/15/15, “Protection Without a Vaccine.” It describes the frontier of research—the use of synthetic genes to “protect against disease,” while changing the genetic makeup of humans. This is no longer science fiction:

By delivering synthetic genes into the muscles of the [experimental] monkeys, the scientists are essentially re-engineering the animals to resist disease.

“The sky’s the limit,” said Michael Farzan, an immunologist at Scripps and lead author of the new study.

The first human trial based on this strategy — called immunoprophylaxis by gene transfer, or I.G.T. — is underway, and several new ones are planned. [That was three years ago.]

I.G.T. is altogether different from traditional vaccination. It is instead a form of gene therapy. Scientists isolate the genes that produce powerful antibodies against certain diseases and then synthesize artificial versions. The genes are placed into viruses and injected into human tissue, usually muscle. –The New York Times

With mandatory vaccine laws being written, it is foreseeable that these vaccines will be forced on people at gunpoint.  You will have to alter your own DNA without your consent.

Public health officials state that vaccines for children and adults are safe and effective, but the truth is far more complicated.

Vaccination is a serious medical intervention that always carries the potential to injure and cause death as well as to prevent disease. Coercive vaccination policies deprive people of free and informed consent—the hallmark of ethical medicine. Americans are increasingly concerned about vaccine safety and the right to make individual, informed choices together with their healthcare practitioners.

Vaccine Epidemic: How Corporate Greed, Biased Science, and Coercive Government Threaten Our Human Rights, Our Health, and Our Children focuses on the searing debate surrounding individual and parental vaccination choice in the United States.

h/t [Technocracy.News]