Breadlines Stretch Across America: This Economic Collapse Is Much Worse Than You Are Being Told
The economic collapse of 2020 has undeniably widened the wealth gap.
Now, our country is essentially divided between those who patiently wait for some food in breadlines – after losing their ability to provide for themselves and, oftentimes, the roof over their heads – and those who sit comfortably at their own homes waiting for the meltdown to be over while discovering the joy of baking bread.
The collapse has laid bare just how unequal our system is.
As euphoria on Wall Street sends stock prices to astronomical heights, Main Street remains in crisis, with roughly 8 million Americans joining the ranks of the poor since June.
The numbers are even letting some billionaires worried that the enormous inequality may lead to mass conflicts in months ahead. And even the establishment is showing it’s afraid that things could suddenly get out of hand, because much more turbulence is about to emerge.
The world’s container liner business is now so consolidated that it can deftly match vessel capacity to cargo demand. This change – courtesy of mergers and alliances – is structural, not cyclical. If there’s a single thesis for container shipping in 2020, that is it.
Assuming it’s true, there could be major future implications for the cargo shippers, yards, box-equipment owners and ship lessors who do business with liners. If liners can indefinitely calibrate capacity to cargo demand, the future newbuilding orderbook should be far less of a threat to liner profits and far less of a savior for shippers. If liners can keep managing capacity like they did this year, they may not need to lease as many containers or ships as they do now. Over the long term, it’s cheaper to own than rent.
To better understand the future implications, American Shipper interviewed Paul Bingham, director of transportation consulting at IHS Markit; Alan Murphy, CEO of Sea-Intelligence; and Stefan Verberckmoes, shipping analyst and Europe editor at Alphaliner.
Why power shifted to liners
“What the carriers have been able to achieve this year is quite remarkable,” said Bingham. “It’s a pretty finely grained management of capacity with a clear eye on headhaul rates.”
“The world of container shipping changed in 2020,” Murphy asserted. “Not because of the coronavirus but because of the response to the coronavirus. Carriers have now succeeded in what they’ve been trying to build for years: the ability to tailor supply to demand on a tactical level.
“What carriers can do now that they couldn’t do before is blank a sailing on very short notice,” he explained.
Ownership consolidation reduced the number of players. This allowed alliances to have fewer members, rendering decision-making far easier. Alliance-member executives can implement those decisions more rapidly thanks to better technology and more efficient alliances structures.
During a Q2 2020 conference call with analysts, Maersk CEO Søren Skou commented, “Since [capacity management] has worked so well for us, why should we change that? In my view, this is a structural change.”
“Capacity management is here to stay,” opined Flexport Global Head of Ocean Freight Nerijus Poskus in an interview with American Shipper last week. “Carriers are now so good at managing capacity proactively that they have an edge in the market.”
Less future risk from newbuilds
Excess newbuilding ordering has long been the bane of liner profits and a source of rate relief for cargo shippers. But today, the orderbook is extremely low, at just 8% of the total fleet. That ratio was 61% in 2007 and 19% in 2015.
“Just as carriers have become more careful about managing capacity, they will also consider managing newbuilds as part of their plan,” predicted Verberckmoes.
Murphy explained, “Now that carriers can tailor capacity to demand, there’s less need for an industry buffer. That means there’s less likelihood that carriers will go out and overorder. They’re not going to do something stupid just because freight rates are stupid.”
A step change in ship size drove the previous decade’s ordering splurge. Maersk began its 18,000 twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) “Triple E” newbuild series in 2011. Other carriers followed suit. But that upsizing is effectively over. “What we do not expect is another big jump in ship size in the short term. And I think that will really make a difference,” said Verberckmoes.
Liners are still placing some orders, largely for replacement as opposed to future growth. “Carriers are looking to renew their fleets and to have more environmentally friendly ships,” said Verberckmoes. “Some are thinking about replacing 8,000-TEU ships with 12,000-TEU ships, which have a better climate footprint.”
Other carriers, including CMA CGM, are building ships powered by liquefied natural gas (LNG).
“There will also be more ‘Megamax’ ships ordered in the 23,000-TEU range,” affimed Verberckmoes. “But if you look at the people ordering new ships now, like Hapag-Lloyd and ONE, these are the guys who haven’t ordered ships in a long time who are catching up with carriers who already have 23,000-TEU ships.”
But longer term, the new normal for liners is a mixed bag for container-equipment lessors.
On the plus side, the liners’ capacity-management acumen sharply decreases future counterparty risk. On the negative side, competition is good for lease rates and consolidation has pared the liner pool. Another negative: The share of boxes that liners lease versus own may fall as liners become financially stronger.
“Leasing is about risk management,” explained Bingham. “When times are good, you can make money on owning containers as well as vessels. If you control everything [via capacity management], you should own all your containers and own all your ships and you’re going to make money on every piece of it. But if the market turns in the other direction, liners will be caught out.”
Verberckmoes added, “In the past, carriers have had very bad results so they were obliged to sell containers and lease them back just to raise money. Now, the situation is better. So, I could imagine some carriers saying, ‘We will own more boxes rather than leasing them.’”
On Maersk’s Q3 2020 analyst call, Skou said, “We need to own more of the containers than we do. If we’re getting assets we are going to use for the full life, it’s much cheaper for us to own them.”
Maersk CFO Patrick Jany added, “For orders of new containers, in the last few years, we have focused more on leasing, and we are coming back … to owning them because it just makes much more sense.”
Owning versus leasing ships
As with container-equipment lessors, today’s cargo-demand surge is a bonanza for container-ship lessors. Since April 1, the shares prices of Seaspan owner Atlas is up 53%, Costamare 77%, GSL 190%, Danaos 350% and Navios Containers 370%.
As with container equipment, the liners’ new normal is a positive for container-ship lessor counterparty risk and a negative in terms of fewer competing customers. The longer-term question is whether healthier finances will sway liners to own more of their ships as opposed to leasing them, mirroring the likely pattern on the container-equipment side.
One recent example: According to Alphaliner, Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) has purchased 19 secondhand ships since August with a total capacity of 102,400 TEUs for an aggregate purchase price of over $290 million. MSC could be buying ships for growth or it could be merely increasing its share of owned tonnage.
Verberckmoes does not believe liners will decrease chartered-in tonnage due to better capacity management. “There are two kinds of deals. You have carriers looking to charter ships for the next year because they need flexibility. And you have carriers chartering ships for the lifespan of the ship with an obligation to buy them at the end of the charter — which is in fact financing.
“I see more carriers doing these kinds of deals where they use charters to finance ships and a higher degree of dependency on the charter market for long-term deals,” he said.
Verberckmoes also sees continued liner demand for shorter-term charters to manage through fluctuating demand. “There will be a need because there is absolutely zero visibility on what is going to happen next year. Right now we have this e-commerce boom, which is very good for shipping. But that could end abruptly. The economy is not doing well. People will lose their jobs. There will be an economic disruption at some time.”
Different strategies for different carriers
Murphy believes liners’ future owning-versus-leasing decisions will vary from carrier to carrier. Strategies differ.
Some carriers keep their average capacity above the cargo demand volatility curve so they don’t get caught short. To do so, they accept a higher cost basis. Other carriers keep capacity lower in relation to cargo demand to reduce costs.
“Because carriers now have the ability to blank their sailings much faster than they could before, they can fit that [average capacity] line much closer to the underlying demand-volatility line,” explained Murphy. This might convince liners that traditionally keep capacity above demand to own more ships as opposed to leasing them, allowing a lower cost basis.
“Overall, if you can match supply with demand on a much more granular level, and you have good ways to minimize the cost of laying up vessels that you don’t need on any given week [due to blank sailings], you might lean more towards ownership,” he said.
Ways this could this go wrong for liners
Bingham remains skeptical that liners can hold the line over the long term when it comes to capacity management. “All of these changes are predicated on continued carrier discipline on capacity deployment. If that breaks down, then so do all of these premises,” he noted.
“In the past, when there were too many ships and you had [lessor-owned] ships going off hire, you saw this competition and downward spiral on charter rates, trying to tempt somebody to jump in, to break somebody away and behave differently,” said Bingham.
“At some point, we’re not going to be able to sustain the current consumption,” he continued. “When that happens, I’m not convinced that all of the participants in all of the alliances won’t succumb to temptation.”
According to Murphy, “This time, it does seem like carriers have learned their lesson. But if there was one thing that I would have put money on during the past 20 years, it was carriers’ ability to grasp failure from the jaws of victory. They have been really good at that.”
Future government intervention?
Beyond collapsing cargo demand, liner capacity discipline faces at least two other future risks. One is China. At some point in the future, some market participants see a possibility that Chinese shipping could go its own way. State-owned companies could place massive orders at Chinese yards and go for market share.
“There are certainly enough shippers banging on regulators’ doors right now,” said Bingham. “At some point, politics is going to play out in this in a way that liners might not fully appreciate.
“If you are able to control your pricing through capacity management, that only works until the point of sovereign intervention.”
The Federal Reserve’s official target rate of inflation is 2% per year.
Put another way, that means that if the Fed hits its target, the value of today’s dollar will only be worth around a third of its current value in 50 years.
Think that can’t happen? It already has.
Look at the chart below showing the decline in the purchasing power of the US dollar since the creation of the Fed in 1913:
With the Fed now in “extreme easing” mode, having printed up nearly $3 trillion in thin-air money just this year alone, it’s not a stretch to expect the value of the dollar to decline even more precipitously from here than current estimates predict.
So, in a world where the Fed is considered by many to BE the market, backstopping investors and stepping in at a moments notice to prevent losses, what is the Fed most likely to do from here?
To address this, we recorded this excellent “fly on the wall” discussion between Danielle DiMartino Booth and Axel Merk, both of whom have inside access to the people running the Federal Reserve.
In this video, they reveal that they share the same sad conclusion that the Fed really doesn’t have a plan to get out of the mess it’s in (a mess of its own creation) and is pretty much just playing for time, trying to delay the inevitable, painful repercussions of its failed policy.
Which is why now, more than ever, is the time to partner with a financial advisor who understands the nature of the risks in play, can craft an appropriate portfolio strategy for you given your needs, and apply sound risk management protection where appropriate: Anyone interested in scheduling a free consultation and portfolio review with Mike Preston and John Llodra and their team at New Harbor Financial can do so by clicking here.
Top US Official Says ‘Growing Body Of Evidence’ Shows COVID-19 Leaked From Chinese Lab
The most ‘credible’ theory about the origin of COVID-19 is that it escaped from a Chinese laboratory, according to US National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger, who made the comment during a Zoom meeting with UK officials.
“There is a growing body of evidence that the lab is likely the most credible source of the virus,” said Pottinger, referring to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, according to the Daily Mail, which notes that ‘even China’s leaders openly admit their previous claims that the virus originated in a Wuhan market are false.’
Pottinger was one of the first US officials to sound the alarm at the White House over the origins of the virus in January 2020, when he initially suspected that the outbreak originated in a Chinese lab – after which Pottinger ordered US intelligence agencies to search for evidence. Good thing he kept this theory to himself, or Twitter may have banned him.
He also slammed the World Health Organization’s probe as a ruse – saying “MPs around the world have a moral role to play in exposing the WHO investigation as a Potemkin exercise,” referring to the facade villages created in 18th Century Crimea to convince the visiting Russian Empress Catherine the Great that the region was doing well.
Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory Party leader who attended the meeting, said Mr Pottinger’s comments represented a ‘stiffening’ of the US position on the theory that the virus came from a leak at the laboratory, amid reports that the Americans are talking to a whistleblower from the Wuhan institute.
‘I was told the US have an ex-scientist from the laboratory in America at the moment,’ he said. ‘That was what I heard a few weeks ago.
‘I was led to believe this is how they have been able to stiffen up their position on how this outbreak originated.’
He added that Beijing’s refusal to allow journalists to visit the laboratory only served to increase suspicion that it was ‘ground zero’ for the pandemic. ‘The truth is there are people who have been in those labs who maintain that this is the case,’ he said.
‘We don’t know what they have been doing in that laboratory. They may well have been fiddling with bat coronaviruses and looking at them and they made a mistake. I’ve spoken to various people who believe that to be the case.’ –Daily Mail
“Even establishment figures in Beijing have openly dismissed the wet market story,” Pottinger told the call participants.
He’s attempting to undermine our democratic process, fuel Trump’s lies about voter fraud, and delay the certification of Biden’s win.
In the end, this reckless stunt will fail, and Joe Biden will become President on Jan. 20, 2021.
Okay, so why is Senator Van Hollen so concerned?
Let Senator Hawley make his case, along with others in the U.S. House. The case will either stand on its own merit or collapse immediately.
For two months, the Democrats have been saying this election is over and should not be challenged at all.
First, elections can be challenged, which is why the U.S. Constitution calls on the U.S. Congress to confirm the results. Democrats should know this because they’ve challenged three elections in twenty years.
Second, what’s wrong with hearing about vote fraud or whatever? Seventy-five million people would like to hear about it even if it does not change the outcome.
So let the process move forward. Nothing bad will happen.
While Bitcoin has been stealing the headlines, it was Ethereum’s turn overnight as the number 2 crypto spiked back above $900 for the first time since Feb 2018…
Source: Bloomberg
Ethereum still has over $400 to go to reach its record highs…
Source: Bloomberg
Bitcoin also pushed higher overnight, nearing $35,000, after correcting sharply to around $30,300 yesterday. But, within 24 hours, BTC has bounced back from $30,300 to as high as $34,778, a 14% rebound…
Source: Bloomberg
Ethereum’s surge began as the BTC/ETH ratio topped 43x once again, and erased all the recent outperformance, back to 37x…
When the price of Bitcoin surpassed $33,000 on Jan. 2, some whales and high-net-worth investors warned that a 150 BTC sell order could retrace the market.
A pseudonymous Bitcoin trader known as “i.am.nomad” wrote:
“A 150 btc market sell would retrace this whole thing. lmao the higher price goes, the more retail gets prices out, the lower bid support will be.”
Within hours he pinpointed the risk of a Bitcoin correction due to thin order books, BTC sharply pulled back.
However, Bitcoin recovered quickly after the initial drop, rallying to a new record-high within 24 hours.
Throughout the past three days, Bitcoin has been trading much higher on Coinbase than on other major exchanges, as Cointelegraph reported.
This means that aggressive buyers on Coinbase were continuously accumulating BTC despite the premium.
Bitcoin surpasses past $34K with average trader returns at highs. Source: Santiment
In the meantime, many traders on Binance Futures were shorting BTC, possibly expecting Bitcoin to top out at around $30,000. When Coinbase buyers continued to push BTC upwards, a short squeeze occurred. Analysts at Santiment explained:
“For those expecting a #Bitcoin correction to kick off 2021, the $34,000 #AllTimeHigh achieved 10 mins ago is showing how painful it’s been being a $BTC bear the past 10 months. Avg. trader returns haven’t been this high across the board since June 2019.”
Ether price rallied off of Bitcoin’s strong technical momentum. ETH/USD rose past $800 for the first time since early May 2018, demonstrating renewed momentum after stagnating throughout December.
A pseudonymous cryptocurrency trader known as “Mayne” said on Jan. 2 before the Ether rally that ETH is likely heading to $800. He said:
“ETH thesis still on track, daily close thru $620 we’d head to $800. I built a large long position in December and assuming $ETHBTC can hold a higher low, I think it’ll play out nicely. I should have had more BTC long exposure vs ETH in December, hoping ETH outperform for Jan.”
Considering the high level of institutional demand for Bitcoin since the first quarter of 2020, the demand could also boost Ether upon the listing.
Google searches for “Bitcoin.” Source: Google Trends
Meanwhile, Bitcoin remains on an upward trajectory of price discovery, hitting new record highs on a daily basis. With a purported supply shortage and an institutional buying frenzy now spilling over into retail, the rally may still have a lot more room to run with $35,000 likely being the next psychological level to break.
As Cointelegraph reported, six-figure predictions have become increasingly common in recent months, particularly as the rally has broken new all-time highs.
New York Jewelry Wholesaler Pleads Guilty In $200 Million Ponzi Scheme
On Wednesday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York published a statement that read a jewelry wholesaler pleaded guilty to a $200 million Ponzi scheme.
Gregory Altieri, of Melville, Long Island, 53, operated a “two-year $200 million Ponzi scheme based on false statements to investors about inflated returns for nonexistent wholesale jewelry deals,” the court document read.
Altieri pleaded guilty to securities fraud in connection with the scheme. He faces 20 years in prison.
“With today’s guilty plea, Altieri is held accountable for duping dozens of investors, including retirees living off their pensions,” Seth DuCharme, the acting U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, said in a statement. “The defendant’s lies have caught up to him and he will now face the consequences of his fraudulent scheme.”
Altieri’s scheme began in 2017 by soliciting $75 million to $85 million from over 80 investors in Queens, Staten Island, Long Island, and abroad.
His investors’ pitch was their money would be used to purchase jewelry at “closeout” prices, which would then be flipped at 30% to 70% gains.
The court document said Altieri initially purchased some jewelry, but around May 2018, he began using money from new investors to pay earlier ones, the hallmarks of a classic Ponzi scheme.
“These purported “returns” were used by Altieri to convince the earlier investors to keep their money with LNA Associates by “rolling over” their funds into new investments based on false promises to use this money to purchase additional jewelry,” the document said.
Without new investors, the Ponzi collapsed in January 2020, when Altieri halted payments to investors.
Earlier this month, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) released a statement that warned investors the agency has experienced “a significant uptick in tips, complaints, and referrals involving investment scams.”
The Federal Reserve and Trump administration have supported a period of wild speculation in markets that could result in more criminals trapping unknowing investors in fraudulent schemes.
Data from the website Ponzitracker shows alleged Ponzi schemes are near decade highs.
“We had seen God in his splendors, heard the text that Nature renders. We had reached the naked soul of men.”
– Ernest Shackleton
One Essential Insight
Welcome to 2021!
The New Year’s edition of the Economic Prism is a place of wild conjecture. This is where we squint our eyes and peer out 12 months through our proprietary prism and report back what we discover.
Make no mistake, 2021 will be the year where everything under the sun happens precisely as it should. Some good. Some bad. Each day shall unfold before you with reciprocal imbalance. You can bet your bottom dollar on it. But what else?
Will gold top $3,000 per ounce? Will bitcoin hit $100K? What about the S&P 500, the yield on the 10-Year Treasury note, and the price of oil?
Will collateralized loan obligations (CLO) be roiled by mass corporate defaults? Will Walmart run out of toilet paper? Are we fated for complete social distortion? Did WWIII just commence in the South China Sea?
The answers to these questions we’re leaving to you this year. Trust your gut.
After a dismal 2020, and with Joe Biden returning to the White House, we’re eschewing predictions of the 12 months before us. Why bother? The Fed’s already said it will leave interest rates near zero through 2023.
Instead, we’re doing something different. With humility and modesty we’ve zeroed in on one essential insight. Our objective is to provide you something of practical value; something that’ll help you navigate through the 2021 unknown.
Suckers, Chumps, and Fools
As context, those counting on government stimulus or relief payments to keep shoes on their feet and food in their bellies are going to be lacking. Indeed, many already are. But as disappointment has slipped to disenchantment something remarkable has happened. The populace has made ever greater demands for the government to do something.
In the midst of this, America’s fake news media recites the story of the national struggle with delicate and excruciating regularity. They frame all happenings from the locus of the two party political system. Any diverging views are carefully sifted out. What’s reported is only what the story script editors allow to pass through their single micron particulate filters.
We are told a never ending Marxian tale of the evil rich exploiting the noble poor. We’re offered story after story with arduous focus applied to gradations of skin color, fractions of ethnicities, and the virtues of non-binary gender designations. Political correctness condescends any exceptions with forceful rigor. Step out of line and you’re brutally cancelled.
Even worse, we’re told the individual must submit to the greater good of the collective. That what’s yours is theirs. Those who object are cast as selfish lowlifes. Thus, we must hunker down so that we may bend the curve.
On top of that, the goal of hard work and paying one’s way in life has been reduced to a game for suckers. Stealth taxation through currency debasement has turned workers into chumps. Small business owners who believe in doing things themselves have been made out for fools.
But what’s the alternative? Being crippled by dependency like everyone else?
By this, we firmly stand amongst suckers, chumps, and fools. Because suckers, chumps, and fools stand for freedom and independence. They want no part of endless government. They downright refuse it.
Moreover, in the face of today’s assaults on liberty, suckers, chumps, and fools have come to embody the human spirit. And the human spirit, as we understand it, will triumph or die trying. Here’s what we mean…
The Human Spirit Writ Large
Henry Worsley should have called it quits. His hero, early 20th century Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton, did. In 1909, Shackleton and three companions went closer to the South Pole than anyone had previously gone. But at 97 nautical miles away, and with death knocking at their door, they retreated.
“A live donkey is better than a dead lion, isn’t it?”, Shackleton later asked his wife.
Exactly 100 year later, Worsley and two companions achieved what Shackleton couldn’t. In 2009, they trekked on foot, and without assistance, to precisely 90 degrees south – where all lines of longitude converge. And they lived to tell about it.
Several years later Worsley did it again. This time with a different crew and by a different route. This made Worsley the first person to trace the two classic routes to the South Pole.
Yet these polar expedition successes were only just warmups. In late-2015 Worsley was at it again. This time he’d be traversing across the entirety of Antarctica. Shackleton had attempted and failed this endeavor 100 years prior.
What’s more, the challenge set by Worsley – a solo expedition – was much greater than Shackleton’s. David Grann, in his article The White of Darkness, detailed the excursion:
“On November 13, 2015, [Worsley] set out from the coast of Antarctica, hoping to achieve what his hero, Ernest Shackleton, had failed to do a century earlier: to trek on foot from one side of the continent to the other. The journey, which would pass through the South Pole, was more than a thousand miles, and would traverse what is arguably the most brutal environment in the world.
“And, whereas Shackleton had been part of a large expedition, Worsley, who was fifty-five, was crossing alone and unsupported: no food caches had been deposited along the route to help him forestall starvation, and he had to haul all his provisions on a sled, without the assistance of dogs or a sail. Nobody had attempted this feat before.”
How to Triumph in 2021 or Die Trying
After the first week, and about 70 nautical miles in, everything began to go wrong. Worsley was first pinned down by a white out. Then he trudged through a blinding dust bowl of ice.
Then another white out. More “white darkness.”A slog through murk as “thick as clotted cream.” Then “the mother of all storms.” And an uphill trudge against a fusillade of ice pellets.
On January 2, Worsley somehow reached the South Pole. But, by then, his body was shutting down. His legs were “stick thin and arms puny.” His Achilles tendons were swollen. He’d broken off his front tooth gnawing on a frozen protein bar. And he was suffering shooting pains from deep within.
Worsley’s days were a “combination of eating, bending, driving, tying, pushing, bracing, draining, swearing, pausing and despairing.” Yet he persevered. He continued on. Step by step. Trudging 15 hours a day through white darkness. At elevations of 9,000 feet. All alone. Attack, attack, attack. Worsley was the human spirit writ large.
Henry Worsley – The Human Spirit Writ Large
The choice for Worsley was always triumph or death. And in the pursuit of triumph he pushed his fate past the point of no return. On January 19 he scribbled in his diary: “Very desperate … slipping away … stomach … took painkillers.” His body was eating itself.
On January 22nd, after seventy-one days and a trek of nearly 800 nautical miles, and only about 100 nautical miles from achieving his cross continental destination, Worsley aborted. Using his satellite phone he called for rescue.
Alas, by the time he reached a hospital in southern Chile it was too late. Bacterial peritonitis, an infection of the thin tissue that lines the inner wall of the abdomen, had taken over. First his liver failed. Then his kidney.
Worsley died on January 24, 2016.
In the opening lines of Shackleton’s, The Heart of the Antarctic, an account of his doomed attempt to reach the South Pole in 1909, he remarked:
“Men go out into the void spaces of the world for various reasons. Some are actuated simply by a love of adventure, some have the keen thirst for scientific knowledge, and others again are drawn away from the trodden paths by the ‘lure of little voices,’ the mysterious fascination of the unknown.”
May you face the 2021 unknown with the human spirit of Worsley. May you triumph or die trying.
Iraqi Protesters Chant “America is the Great Satan” On Tense Soleimani Death Anniversary
Mass demonstrations have taken over central Baghdad on Sunday, marking the one-year anniversary of the death of popular Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, killed by US drone strike at Baghdad’s airport on Jan.3, 2020.
As Reuters observed, angry Iraq protesters are changing anti-American slogans as they fill up Tahrir square in the center of the capital: “Demonstrators gathering at Tahrir square in response to calls by an assortment of militia groups known collectively as the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), which are mostly backed and trained by Iran, waved the Iraqi flag and chanted anti-American slogans such as ‘America is the Great Satan’“.
Video from #Baghdad’s Tahrir square right now.
Thousands of mourners gathered in Iraq’s iconic square to mark the anniversary of the assassination of Iran’s top commander Qassem Soleimani and a senior Iraqi leader of Iran-backed paramilitary groups Abu Mahdi Muhandis pic.twitter.com/WJj7tY9Lme
The day prior on Saturday thousands blocked the highway leading out of Baghdad International Airport in a march to mourn the IRGC Quds Force commander’s death in a simulated funeral procession, Reuters noted further.
Iraqis are also mourning Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, commander of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU). The Shia militias which often coordinate with national army units are widely seen as supported by Iran, and have been frequently blamed in the past of carrying out attacks against US troops and the embassy in Baghdad.
Iranian state media quoted one Tahrir Square demonstrator as saying, “We are here to commemorate the martyrdom of Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and Qassem Soleimani.” He added: “Let us not forget, they sacrificed a lot for Iraq and they defeated America in Iraq.”
Iraqi PMU leaders have called on the nation to participate in a “million-man march” which is being dubbed “Days of Martyrdom and Sovereignty.” However, thus far the protests don’t appear to be anywhere near that size.
As #Iran marks one year since the killing of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Maj.-Gen. Qasem #Soleimani, US security officials warn tensions in the Middle East are at a dangerous high pic.twitter.com/fC9XJfFWiJ
Currently US bases in Iraq are on high alert given fears that Iran may use PMU forces to retaliate; however, the Islamic Republic thus far has appeared reluctant to provoke a response from the US while Trump is sill in office.
Iranian leaders have of late accused Israel and the Trump administration of coordinating to create a fabricated “pretext for war” ahead of Biden’s entry into the White House.
