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Authored by Christoph Gisiger via TheMarket.ch,

Blackstone’s market maven Byron Wien sees a significant correction risk. He warns of rising speculation in the stock market, the vulnerable state of the U.S. economy and possible turmoil in the course of the presidential election. He also shares his views on where he spots opportunities for patient investors.

Was this just a meaningless thunderstorm after an extraordinarily hot summer? Or should investors better prepare for a severe weather situation?

That’s the key question after a turbulent two-day stretch of trading that snapped a five-week winning streak for U.S. stocks. Popular tech mega caps like Apple and Microsoft lost 8% to 10%. Tesla is down more than 16%.

«There’s a lot of speculation going on. That’s probably not a healthy thing», says Byron Wien. «The market is vulnerable,» adds the renowned investment strategist during a conversation via Zoom from his private home in the East Hamptons.

Best known for his annual list of ten market surprises, Mr. Wien fears that the U.S. economy will recover slower than most investors think. He also believes that a lack of discipline in containing the pandemic, social unrest, record high debt and political bickering in Washington have a negative impact on America’s stance in the world, reflected in the weaker dollar.

In this in-depth interview with the Market/NZZ, the Wall Street legend explains why the risk of a correction is high, how the presidential election could cause trouble for stocks in the coming weeks, and where he spots attractive opportunities for patient investors.

Mr. Wien, the market rally has suffered a setback last week. Is this a harbinger of more serious trouble to come, or are stocks just taking a breather?

Most investors are confused because the economy doesn’t seem to be doing quite as well as financial markets. Yet, there really isn’t a disconnect: Individual investors are propelling the market to new highs, and they are doing it by pushing up the prices of the internet related stocks, the stocks that are benefiting from people working at home.

There’s a raging debate about the extent to which retail traders have been supporting this rally. What’s your take on this phenomenon?

There is a lot of gambling that’s going on. Individual investors that ordinarily would bet on sports events are betting on stocks. That’s being reflected in the FAANGs and names like Tesla. But I don’t think it’s indicative of the real world. Just look at the options market. There are a lot of individuals who are buying options, and they are particularly buying them with two weeks or less left to run. That’s speculation in the market and probably not a healthy thing.

As one of the most experienced market strategists in the investment business, you have seen a thing or two. To what extent does today’s mentality in financial markets remind you of the dotcom mania in the late nineties?

Every market cycle is different. In the late nineties, the dotcom bubble was fueled by a real breakthrough in technology, the advent of the internet. It was changing people’s lives, and that was a positive change. It just got carried to excess: The market got overpriced and it was selling at over 30 times earnings. Today, this is a different thing. It’s a negative surprise: A virus that is going to change the way we live, and it’s difficult to assess the long-term implications of it. In my opinion, the market is overpriced, but it isn’t as outrageously priced as it was back then. So the market is vulnerable, but I don’t think we’re going to have a bear market as a result of it.

Why?

In the United States, about 40% of the labor force can work effectively from home. And, we’re doing so with surprising effectiveness. I’m impressed with how much we can accomplish staying at home, even if we know we’re missing something: We’re not interacting with colleagues, mentoring junior people and cross-fertilizing ideas in group meetings. So the economy is moving along, but the unemployment rate is higher than 8%. That’s a lot of lost buying power because if you don’t have a job, you’re not spending much. And, even if you do have a job, you’re a little apprehensive. I’m not spending nearly as much as I would normally. I’m not going to the theater or to restaurants and I’m not buying any clothes. In addition to that, we’re going to have 17 million households evicted during the fourth quarter. That is 30 to 40 million people.

How will this affect the economic recovery?

I describe it as a square root recovery. So far, we’re through the V-part of it: Housing is back very strongly and manufacturing is bouncing back. For example, U.S. domestic auto production increased by 200% from May to June and has recovered to nearly two-thirds of pre-Covid levels. However, large portions of the economy are in serious trouble. The hospitality segment – including hotels, restaurants, resorts and cruise lines – will take a long time to recover. The airline industry may suffer from secular change. Thousands of small businesses have closed during the recession; many will never reopen, because their owners have gone bankrupt or chosen to retire. So now, we’re in a more gradual improvement. We will continue to work our way back to normal, but at a slower pace than we did right at the beginning of the recovery.

In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, the U.S. was first to come out of the recession. Will it be the other way around this time?

We’ve already seen that. China looks like it’s pretty much recovered, and Europe is following behind. The U.S. is lagging and that’s because we don’t have enough discipline in social distancing, in tracing, testing and wearing masks. There is a certain amount of defiance, and that’s hurting us.

So what’s going to happen next?

At best, the economy is a quarter or one third of the way back to normal. Yet, the market is pricing stocks as if we’re going to be back to 2019 levels some time next year. That’s very unlikely. The earliest we can get back to 2019 is 2022, and I’m not even sure about that. The market also thinks that we are going to have a vaccine by the end of the year. That’s a realistic assumption. It’s likely that the vaccine will be given to essential workers starting next year. But I don’t think that people like me will get it until the end of next year. So a return to normal is a 2022 phenomenon.

You love to travel and visit clients around the world. How does the pandemic affect your life on a personal level?

Right now, I go out once a week at somebody’s home for dinner, and I ask the person not to have more than six people. Most people adhere to that, but last Saturday night I went to a dinner and there were eight people over. I don’t think anybody would have more than eight people around a table. I have not been on an airplane since March, and I don’t intend to get on an airplane until I have a vaccine. I don’t go into a store. I do go to restaurants, but I order take-out from them. I live with my wife and occasional relatives at home, so I have no reason to complain.

It’s less than two months until the presidential election. To what degree will the race for the White House impact financial markets?

A lot will depend on who is going to win the election. Joe Biden looks like he’s going to win, but then the lead is narrowing. Also, there’s the controversy over mail-in voting. In terms of the number of votes that are going to be exercised on the day of the election, Donald Trump will be the leader. But when all the mail-in votes are counted, I think Mr. Biden will win. So the outcome is going to be very confusing at the beginning. Assuming Mr. Biden wins, it’s likely that taxes will be raised, and that’s not reflected in the earnings estimates of analysts. Thus, those who are forecasting that earnings in 2021 will get back to 2019 levels are too optimistic. I don’t think we have a shot at getting back to 2019 levels in earnings until 2022.

How will the stock market react if Mr. Biden wins the election?

The debates are going to be important and candidates are always subject to a gaffe. If the market was sure that Mr. Biden is going to win, stocks would be lower. In a Biden presidency, we’re going to see higher taxes on corporations and individuals as well as more regulations, especially environmental regulations that have been dismantled. So if the Democrats win, there are going to be some important changes, and they will probably be negative for the stock market. But the market is discounting the possibility of a Trump victory, and many investors view Mr. Trump as more favorable for the market.

How big is the risk of a correction against this background?

There’s a fair chance of a correction. Selling at 23 times next year’s earnings, the market is very fully priced here. It doesn’t discount anything that could go wrong. We have already seen the U.S. Dollar weaken by 10%. That could be a problem for the market. It will help earnings, but a weak Dollar is not a good sign. We don’t know how far the Dollar depreciation is going to go.

What’s behind the Dollar weakness?

I’m just saying the market is being priced for a continuation of the present environment, and there are a number of factors that could change the environment. We haven’t licked the virus yet, and even when we have a vaccine, we won’t lick it because not everybody is going to take the vaccine. For instance, only 40% of Americans obtain ordinary flu shots. And, those who do take the vaccine are going to take it over a long period of time. So today’s combination of social unrest, enormous fiscal and monetary stimulus, poor discipline in limiting the spread of the virus, gridlock in Washington and avoidance of international involvement may have diminished America’s standing among nations in the world.

For this year, the U.S. budget deficit is expected to hit a record $3.3 trillion. That’s more than double the levels experienced after the market meltdown and Great Recession of 2008-09. How worrisome is this to you?

There is a price to pay. We haven’t seen it show up in inflation or interest rates yet. So we don’t know what the price is going to be, but we just can’t keep on engaging in this fiscal and monetary stimulus indefinitely. We had an unprecedented level of stimulus, and that stimulus is supposed to get the economy going. But ultimately, the economy is expected to have a certain natural momentum on its own. That hasn’t shown up yet, so the market is dependent on continuous government subsidies. In my view, this is survival money: The economy is surviving on the basis of monetary expansion and fiscal spending. That means if it ever stops, the economy is going to recede and perhaps go into recession again – and that’s a very precarious position to be in.

There’s a growing number of market observers warning of inflation. Do you share their concern?

I’m not worried about inflation. Too many people are looking for jobs which means chances of wage inflation are low. There’s some food inflation, but the price of oil is still in the low forties, and that’s the most important commodity. In short, inflation is not going to be a problem and interest rates are going to stay low, and that’s a favorable background for the market.

What’s your take on gold?

I can’t say I’m a fan of gold, but I think it makes sense to own some gold here. I recommend it for individual clients, not for institutions. Individual clients should have a 5% position in gold. For institutions, there are still enough other things to buy.

On Wall Street, everybody knows you for your yearly prediction of ten surprises. What could surprise investors looking forward?

A big surprise on a global level is if there were more harmony between China and the West. The hostility between the two largest economies in the world is not good for the markets. So if there would be some reconciliation or some rapprochement between the U.S. and China that would restore normal relations, it would be interpreted favorably by the financial markets. That’s unlikely in a Trump presidency. It’s more likely, but not certain, in a Biden presidency.

What’s your advice for investors in this kind of environment?

There is a great deal of speculation going on in the market. Stocks like Apple, Amazon or Facebook reflect that. But there is a good part of the market that’s underpriced. There’s a pocket of the market, hospitality and energy, that’s attractive because eventually, we will return to normal. I don’t know exactly when, but when we do, those stocks will respond. For example, if you go out on the highway, there are already a lot of cars on the road, so people are driving right now. Notably, China is consuming more oil today than it did a year ago. Airlines, transportation and hospitality have performed poorly, and some represent good value for patient investors who can tolerate the risk as a part of their portfolio.

And where do you spot opportunities internationally?

I’m sort of on hold on the emerging markets. They’re attractive in terms of valuation. But on the other hand, they are suffering more than the developed markets. Europe is attractive, there is a lot of good value in Europe. My feeling is that financial stocks, the banks, are attractive.

Weeks ago NATO formally rejected embattled President Alexander Lukashenko’s claim that the military alliance was busy building up forces along border areas with Belarus. “NATO troops are at our gates. Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and … Ukraine are ordering us to hold new elections,” he previously told supporters at a rally in mid-August.

Lukashenko reportedly deployed Belarusian national troops to the Western border in response, as tens of thousands of demonstrators demanding he step down after what they say was a “rigged” Aug.9 election ensuring the 26-year ruling strongman stays in power. 

While it’s unclear the degree to which NATO forces were actually mobilizing or on alert in prior weeks, what is clear as of this weekend is that US troops are indeed next door after having freshly arrived in preparation for two months of joint drills. 

Several hundred troops arrived in neighboring NATO member Lithuania for the “pre-planned” military drills, AFP reported Saturday. Crucially the drills are near the border with Belarus, and include dozens of Abrams tanks which earlier crossed the border from Poland to participate in the war games. 

While Lukashenko is likely to see it as a self-validating prophecy of sorts, Lithuania’s defense ministry has stressed the war games are “pre-planned and not associated with any events in the region.”

Still, Minsk has viewed Lithuania as an external trouble-maker given it immediately gave refuge to opposition head and Lukashenko rival for president Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. After she fled Belarus she’s given frequent messages of support to the mass anti-Lukashenko movement in the streets.

Meanwhile, the embattled leader which has recently witnessed tens of thousand march to the entrance of his presidential compound, has had to call in military armed vehicles in order to secure the capital amid the swelling protests.

Over the course of August and into September protests, clashes with police have gotten increasingly fierce:

Riot police have been filmed by the BBC attacking and forcibly arresting university students in the capital of Belarus

The students from Minsk were marching in protest against long-time leader Alexander Lukashenkohttps://t.co/Tez19DC5OI pic.twitter.com/O4dy99fyWj

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) September 2, 2020

He’s also touted that Putin has pledged security assistance should the situation destabilize, though it at this point remains unclear the degree Moscow would back his rule, unless Lukashenko comes under direct threat of NATO intervention. 

The worst fear is that another Ukraine situation could develop, but at moment it’s unlikely that either Europe or Russia has the stomach to escalate things to that level. 

Authored by Thor Lihaug via TheDuran.com,

Over the last two decades, Western economies have been increasingly driven by debt.  A significant contributor to the 2008 stock market crash was unsustainable debt.  

How did we fix the problem? We loaned even more.  

Since then Western nations have doubled the national debt levels. The Covid crisis makes it even worse. Governmental rescue programs are on rapid escalation with a huge decline in national fiscal income.  This will have to be financed by either more loans, taxes or a combination thereof. Who or when to pay for it all, is quite unclear, but there will be no escape for taxpayers.  A Wealth Tax (WT) is a recurring hot topic in crises, but a novelty to the UK.

Former US Democrat presidential nominees Elisabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have already suggested a new Wealth Tax on wealthy Americans.  Joe Biden’s tax proposals are predicted to increase taxes for households at every income level and make the federal tax code more progressive, but he has to my knowledge rejected proposals for a Wealth Tax.  On the other hand, strong forces are pushing him further to the left on the political spectrum and WT is highly supported among left progressives. California Democrats have raised two proposals to raise taxes on the “rich.” Assembly Bill 1253 and 2088 would raise the top tax rates in California – which are already the nation’s highest at 13.3% – even higher with the introduction of a 0,4% Wealth Tax.

In UK the Wealth Tax debate is partially obscured by other political events, as the Brexit debacle.  The WT appears to have eluded the interest of most media outlets however, powerful forces are supporting WT. Many political leaders are already expressing clear support. Member of the OMFIF Advisory Board, Brian Reading (former Economic Adviser to UK Prime Minister Edward Heath) states:

“The pandemic makes the case for a British wealth tax undeniable. A wealth tax helps to reduce inequality. It is an economic and moral necessity. The cost of this outbreak should not be left as a future burden solely on those who work, save and invest to create wealth.” 

So, what is Wealth Tax, and what are the experiences?

The wealth tax is similar to a property tax. But instead of taxing only real estate, it covers wealth in all forms: stocks, cash, jewellery, yachts, cars, paintings, — any tangible asset that could be appraised a monetary value.  By contrast, most other taxes are based on income or consumption. Wealth Tax is not a new thing in Europe, but most countries have scrapped it on grounds that it is considered to be counterproductive. Wealth taxes encourage avoidance, evasion, and capital flight.  European wealth taxes generally brought in a mere 0.2% of GDP in revenues, a study from the Cato Institute noted.  Today only Belgium, Norway, Switzerland and Spain are relying on Wealth Tax. Norway is considered to enforce the toughest WT of all, still providing only 1,1% revenue of the GDP in 2017.

The Norwegian WT goes back in time to 1892 when it was introduced together with income tax.  Norway has been ruled by a conservative minority government for the last 6 years but has failed to terminate the WT as promised in the political manifesto. WT holds strong symbolic value to left-leaning politicians.  As with most taxes, once introduced, they tend to live forever.

WT has several adverse effects, acknowledged but ignored by the Norwegian political majority.  I will briefly touch a few of them.

Political support for WT is gathered on claims that WT targets only the rich. There is no common definition of “rich” in the western world, but the presidential campaigns from the US democratic campaigners suggest a WT threshold on USD 32 mill or higher. According to polling by YouGov, 61% of the UK public will support a wealth tax for individuals with assets worth more than £750,000.  On the other side of the scale, the Norwegian tax system defines “rich” on a net worth of only USD 164 000. Hence, 29% of Norway’s full-time wagers pay WT and the number grows steadily by escalating property values.

The stark fact, although no exact numbers have been presented, is that a great number of (the few) extremely wealthy Norwegians have fled the country.  Assisted by sharp lawyers they bring family, jobs, businesses, and assets. This is why the most wealthy and productive Norwegian, no 141 on Forbes 2020, is living in London. Good for UK, but bad for Norway.  Furthermore, WT effectively targets small business owners, homeowners, and any other person or family saving for a college fund, retirement or just for a rainy day.  WT is blind to liquidity and income.  This creates a tremendous and unsustainable problem to taxpayers with “much assets and little cash”.  Small business owners are often hit hard, particularly when the business is not generating income or dividend.  Pensioners owning their own home with no mortgage is also very often in this unfortunate group.

Norway enforced a tax ceiling, preventing anyone to pay more tax than 80% of total net income. The ceiling was removed in 2009 by a labour government, aiming to increase tax on “the rich”. Consequently, there is no upper limit on the total tax bill. The conservative opposition slept on duty and failed to understand the implications. Today, some taxpayers pay more tax than income.  Hard to believe, but yes it is true. This forces some of the most productive citizens to flee the country.  Norway has also passed laws attempting to prevent people from leaving the country – The taxman will come after you for 5 years. It’s like the tax version of Eagles’ Hotel California; “You can check-in, but you can never leave”. Constructive criticism of such a system has been like water on a duck’s back.

Germany’s IFO Institute simulated in 2018 the introduction of a German Wealth Tax of 0,8%. The study presented some very significant findings. It was concluded that WT would annually raise 15 billion euros while giving a revenue loss of 31 billion euros, and with an employment reduction of 2%.  In other words – for every euro gained, two euros are lost.  It is fair to assume that same will apply to most advanced economies, but UK’s Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has no later than this summer, launched a similar study to explore the possibilities of a British WT.  The project is scheduled to issue its report in December 2020.

Taxpayers have all the reason to fear a Wealth Tax. The Norwegian experience and Germany’s pragmatic study conclude that WT is harming national economies. Productive citizens flee the country and the burden of WT is effectively borne by every citizen, even when the tax is designed to target only the rich. WT has completely failed to meet its fiscal objectives, nor does it create less inequality or produce more teachers or nurses.  The political justification is false. A Wealth Tax will certainly not make the UK, or any other nation for that matter, the Land of Hope and Glory.

New footage, published on social media, shows Spain’s Civil Guard flying a helicopter over popular Spanish beaches, ordering locals and tourists, over a loudspeaker, to exit the area amid new restrictions as coronavirus cases surge.  

The helicopter, spotted over the coastline on Palma Beach and Calvia Beach on Majorca, one of Spain’s Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean, on Saturday, could be heard instructing beachgoers to leave the area. 

🚁 Sinceramente me parece espeluznante ..

Mallorca. España 🇪🇸 pic.twitter.com/2DAVGRNrLw

— Noelia de Trastámara (@N_Trastamara) September 5, 2020

Social media users described the video as “creepy,” others said: “We are in the police and oppressive state without realizing it. Monitoring the population with helicopters instead of monitoring the drain of our borders or the real criminals. We are left with a precious dictatorship.” 

Another user said, “Hitler would be proud. Total state control. Extreme authoritarian govt machine turned against the people who it extracts resources from to fund the heli covid nazi regime.” 

The government of the Balearic Islands recently enforced new coronavirus restrictions as the contagion reemerged in Spain. Beaches have banned people from 9 pm and 7 am; stricter public health orders have hit restaurants, bars, shops, and night clubs, with many forced to close and or limit capacity and hours. 

Local officials have also placed rules on social gatherings and suspended sporting and cultural activities. Curfews, in some areas, could be seen if surging cases across the Balearic Islands gets out of hand.

In response to the use of helicopters, the Civil Guard spokesman said: “The diffusion of messages using megaphones from vehicles and helicopters at beaches and parks is being carried out daily.”

“This is happening to make sure the new rules established by the Balearic Islands regional government regarding the new timetables, are adhered to,” the spokesman said.

As of Sept., Spain is becoming the epicenter of new coronavirus cases in Europe. 

RT News contributor Neil Clark said Spain’s control is “even more authoritarian than it was under Francisco Franco,” who ruled Spain from 1939 to 1975 as a dictator. 

Authored by Judith Bergman via The Gatestone Institute,

In June, four armed Swedish police officers seized and confiscated the entire stock of the book Det här är en svensk tiger (“This is a Swedish Tiger“), written by Swedish author and standup comedian, Aron Flam. The book tells the story of how Sweden’s claim of neutrality during World War II covered up a reality of Swedish collaboration with the Nazi war effort and the profits that the Social Democratic government made from the war.

The title of the book is a play on the words of a 1941 wartime poster of a tiger drawn in the blue and yellow colors of the Swedish flag with the title “En svensk tiger” (“A Swedish Tiger”) and made by Swedish illustrator Bertil Almqvist. The word “tiger” in Swedish means tiger, but it also means to keep silent. The original poster was part of a Swedish government campaign to warn Swedes to keep silent, presumably not to rattle Sweden’s wartime relationship with Nazi Germany.

Flam satirized Almqvist’s illustration on the cover of his own book by drawing an armband with a swastika on the tiger, and having one of its front legs lifted in the Nazi salute, while winking at the reader. The owner of the copyright of Almqvist’s tiger, however, Sweden’s Military Readiness Museum, alleged that Flam had violated its copyright and reported him to the police — who confiscated the books. According to Flam, now the prosecutor even wants to seize books from readers who already bought them, to make sure the books are destroyed.

The confiscation of books and the upcoming case against Flam has ignited a debate in Sweden about the value of freedom of speech. As Flam has pointed out, a Swedish writer who happens to be Jewish having his books, critical of Swedish-Nazi collaboration during the war, seized by the Swedish state is a bit ironic.

“Just the idea that there is a prosecutor who is seriously pushing to track down and destroy books is Kafkaesque. If they had contented themselves with tearing off the front-page, but no”, Flam said.

As always, how the police and prosecution choose to operate is a matter of priorities; those (curious) priorities were on display in another recent court case about free speech, as well. In it, an elderly Swedish woman was sentenced to a fine for “incitement”, after she expressed her anger on Facebook over the violent assault by a 27-year old man on an 86-year old pensioner.

“Yes, he [the perpetrator] will probably be out [of prison…] right away. It would be better to send him out of the country, what kind of monkey people come into the country, deportation is all that applies now, there are no mitigating circumstances… The monkeys should not come here and commit such crimes…”

The woman did not mention any specific group of people in her Facebook post, yet the court found that she had incited hate against immigrants:

“The district court…finds that the communication cannot be understood in any other way than that it is aimed at such a group of people who are protected by the provision — immigrants – i.e. the ethnic groups in Sweden who have in common that they have a different national origin than the majority population. By calling this group ‘monkeys’ and ‘monkey people’, NN [the woman] has expressed herself in a way that must be considered derogatory.”

The case was not unusual for Sweden. The prosecution of pensioners, and others, for speech crimes is commonplace.

The problem is that Sweden is a country deeply mired in a growing violent crime wave that its authorities have not been able to defeat. While Swedish police and prosecutors give a high priority to the confiscation of books with covers of satirized Swedish tigers and pensioners guilty of “Wrongthink”, they evidently do not have the resources to confront violent crimes.

In Uppsala, for instance, a report from 2019 showed that 80% of girls in high school do not feel safe. In 2013, that number was 45%.

Recently, SVT Nyheter ran a story about a 13-year-old girl who had been raped in a public toilet in a mall in Uppsala in November last year. Even though the police knew who the suspect was, it took them seven months to arrest him. “Since the police did not have the resources, he was not detained until now”, Moa Blomqvist, the prosecutor in the case, told Swedish Television. “I am very upset that such serious crimes are piled up waiting with the police…” The police deny Blomqvist’s claim.

In July, a mother of three and her sister, who were walking home with their husbands, suffered head injuries when a man, who identified himself to the women as coming from Gottsunda, a “no-go zone” in Uppsala, decided to start kicking them in the head, apparently for no reason. The man was soon joined by a gang, who proceeded to whip the husbands with belts. The police so far have no suspects in the case. Two weeks later, in the center of Uppsala, a man was stabbed multiple times.

Uppsala, once a picturesque and peaceful university town, is now the town in Sweden with the most shootings per capita. “The gangs have been allowed to grow” Manne Gerell, a criminologist at Malmö University told SVT Nyheter in December 2019, adding that the police had “woken up” a little too late.

Uppsala has also been hit by several bombings — attacks, typically gang-related, using explosive devices. In 2019, Sweden had 257 cases. The latest Uppsala bombing took place in June: a “minor explosive device” detonated in an apartment building.

Yet, in Sweden, in 2019, not even one in ten bombings led to criminal charges, according to SVT Nyheter.

Perhaps it is time for Sweden’s government to spend fewer resources on prosecuting the speech crimes of pensioners and comedians, and more on fighting violent crime.

The Kremlin has lashed out at US and NATO forces, saying amid the ongoing tit-for-tat intercepts over the Black and Baltic Seas, NATO is dangerously escalating its tactics to include “mock missile strikes” targeting Russian border areas. 

Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu made the comments in a Russian broadcast interview on Sunday, where he noted a significant increase in foreign surveillance and provocative aerial drills in the vicinity of Russia’s airspace. Importantly he described that: 

“The most alarming is that if earlier – even though not that frequently – there were mainly reconnaissance aircraft, they’ve now begun regular training flights with large numbers of planes, during which the mock missile strikes are conducted.”

Indeed within the past week the US has sent multiple B-52 bomber flights over the Black Sea in the direction of Russia’s borders, resulting in two close-up intercepts after Russian fighter jets were scrambled. 

As we described earlier, it appears the US is attempting to sweep up valuable intelligence data on Russia’s aerial sensors and communications tech in the process. Both sides typically have reconnaissance aircraft nearby when such tense encounters happen.

USAF video of an ‘unsafe and unprofessional’ intercept of a B-52 by a Russian SU-27 over the Black Sea. pic.twitter.com/k7lzNseIJJ

— Andy Netherwood (@AndyNetherwood) August 30, 2020

In late August a Russian intercept of a B-52 flight resulted in what the Pentagon slammed as “unsafe” maneuvers by the Russian side, which even limited the US bomber’s ability to change course, given the Russian aircraft reportedly came within a mere 100 feet of the bomber’s nose. 

Authored by Brad Bird via The Epoch Times,

Eighty years ago this month one of the great turning points of the Second World War took place, one that saved the radar and airfield defences of an England on the brink of invasion.

With the fall of France in June 1940, nothing but the English Channel stood between Hitler’s blitzkrieg and British soil. Many, including Prime Minister Winston Churchill, expected invasion to be imminent. Preparations were made as well as possible, including small arms practice by the Royal Family and the prime minister himself.

The heart of Britain’s army, its Expeditionary Force fighting in France, had been forced to leave most of its weapons and machinery in France, as—in what became known as the Miracle of Dunkirk—more than 300,000 men escaped capture to return home via Dunkirk by way of a large civilian flotilla in early June.

To the amazement of many, Adolf Hitler chose this time to sight-see near Paris. The British, he was convinced, were not among Germany’s natural enemies, and he desired not to conquer the island but to reach an accommodation with its government. Churchill would have none of it, and on July 10 the Battle of Britain, an attempt by the Germans to achieve air superiority prior to invasion, began.

Airfields and radar stations, Britain’s newest and most promising technology, were targeted by the Luftwaffe from the start. Serious damage was done to landing strips, aerodromes, and fighter planes on the ground, as well as radar structures. At one point, Air Marshal Hugh Dowding despaired that the British could keep up the fight.

Then the navigational error that turned the tide occurred.

On the night of Aug. 24, a formation of Heinkel bombers lost their bearings and flew over London. (Some claim this was deliberate.)

Thinking they were clear of the city, they released their bombs and went home.

Hitler had forbidden the bombing of London in hopes of sparing German cities the wrath of British attacks. An angry Churchill, sensing a chance to save his embattled airfields, ordered a reprisal raid. Eighty-one Wellington bombers flew to Berlin.

The political and cultural heart of Nazi Germany, Berlin was deep inside the Third Reich. Putting aside reason, advice, and the fact his air force had nearly crippled British defences by pummeling their aerodromes and radar stations, on Sept. 4 Hitler promised a cheering crowd that since Britain had dared to bomb Berlin, he would smash her cities.

Hundreds of bombers attacked London, and before the Blitz was over many other centres such as Coventry were also in flames, with more than 40,000 civilians killed. But the aerodromes and radar stations were largely spared from that point, and the damaged ones were repaired. This enabled the young men in Hurricanes and Spitfires to prevail, preserving air superiority over English soil and the English Channel and making invasion untenable.

In this manner, England was saved.

A German Messerschmitt fighter plane is paraded outside the Houses of Parliament in London after being shot down by Allied Spitfire pilots, circa 1940. (Keystone/Getty Images)

Churchill’s Genius

Another part of the story also needs to be stressed. Had almost anyone other than Churchill been prime minister, Hitler might well have achieved a peace pact—and then broken it to slaughter innocents, as he had done before. Respected men like Viscount Halifax and Neville Chamberlain argued for accommodation, not war; they wanted peace, not another bloodbath such as they had witnessed from 1914 to 1918.

Like Churchill, they were products of the First World War, when almost a full generation, the cream of British manhood, was mowed down by machine guns and shelling in the trenches of France. Some 887,000 soldiers from the United Kingdom and its colonies died in the Great War, while 1.6 million were wounded. (Germany suffered 4.3 million dead and missing). Britain was also crippled financially, its treasury depleted.

Chamberlain, having misread Hitler’s intentions (after being lied to and deceived at Munich in 1938), and lacking conviction and direction as Hitler’s armies roared across the Low Countries early in 1940, had been pressured by his own party to step down. While many Conservatives favoured replacing him with the predictable but dour Halifax over the brilliant but unstable (so they said) Churchill, the majority embraced Churchill’s genius, his clarion calls to prepare, his bulldog tenacity, and his long grooming for war as a soldier, writer, statesman, and historian. It helped that he was a descendant of John Churchill, a British hero, the 1st Duke of Marlborough (1650-1722).

Even as a youth, Churchill felt destined for greatness.

“We are all worms,” he liked to say, in mock humility, “but I’m a glow worm.”

Indeed.

There was no one else like him in Parliament. It was an epic case of preparation meeting opportunity. Had Churchill been killed in the Boer War as a young man, or if illness had put out his light as a youth, then accommodation with Hitler may well have been reached in May-June 1940. Disarmed, England would have been weak. Almost certainly, the same slaughter of Jews, intellectuals, the infirm, Gypsies, and homosexuals which took place on continental Europe (some six million dead to 1945 in addition to six million Jews) would also have happened in England.

Many in England and North America had openly admired Hitler’s success in rejuvenating the German economy during the Great Depression. Mackenzie King, Canada’s prime minister and usually a shrewd judge of character, met with the German dictator in June 1937 and left convinced of his peaceful intentions. American hero Charles Lindberg, whose solo trans-Atlantic flight in May 1927 was the first of its kind, also admired the Austrian-born fascist with the peasant background and beguiling ways.

But Churchill knew better. Almost alone in the 1930s, the man many regard as the greatest Englishman who ever lived, sounded the alarm week after week in the House of Commons as friends fed him gen (facts) about Germany’s rearming in breach of the Treaty of Versailles, or about Jews and others being persecuted. Alone among the Conservatives, embattled within his own party, accused of war-mongering and malice, Churchill stared down the gullible minions around him and soldiered on in his tireless efforts to see that England was ready for the conflict to come. She scarcely was.

Thanks largely to Churchill’s “few” – the pilots of Hurricanes and Spitfires who fought courageously to stop Hitler’s invasion – England won the Battle of Britain. While 1,497 Allied aircrew died in the victory, including 22 Canadians (more than 100 Canadians took part), some 2,500 German aircrew also perished.

Eight American pilots fought in the Battle of Britain, including ex-barnstormers and a Minnesota farm boy.

Thanks are also due to the many women in Britain’s civil defences such as those in fire brigades, ambulance drivers, nurses, and air raid wardens, not to mention the many in factories making armaments.

With the great assistance of Churchill’s friend President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the United States, and the indomitable efforts of Soviet armies to repel Hitler’s troops on the Eastern Front (where 27 million Soviet troops and civilians died, and 4 million Germans), the Allies went on to win the war.

Yet it all hinged, in those early months of the conflict, on a certain raid of Heinkels going astray over London. Such are the vicissitudes of war.

Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

My home state of Victoria has become the center of attention in the anti-lockdown movement for its authoritarian crackdown against not just people who are in violation of lockdown protocol, but people who merely post about staging future anti-lockdown protests on social media.

Police have been breaking into people’s homes and arresting them in front of their children under charges of “incitement” for posting about anti-lockdown protests on Facebook, drawing international headlines. This is obviously a major threat to human rights that sets a dangerous precedent and will have many undesirable knock-on effects, and it should be condemned unequivocally.

“This is awful. ‘Incitement’ is going to be used to crack down on all sorts of protests — including on issues we agree with and think are worth protesting,” explained Australian author and analyst Ketan Joshi of one such arrest.

“Every time I post about this, I am stunned by the number of people who seem furiously unwilling to draw any connection between what’s happening above and the history of climate and anti-racist protest in Australia.”

“Those who claim Covid-19 is being exploited by governments to dismantle our diminishing freedoms have just been handed a chilling new piece of evidence to support their case,” tweeted journalist Jonathan Cook.

Those who claim Covid-19 is being exploited by governments to dismantle our diminishing freedoms have just been handed a chilling new piece of evidence to support their case.

Nothing about this okay – including the comments justifying her arrest https://t.co/8aJMf5ePQC

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) September 2, 2020

Indeed this ham-fisted approach seems to be a lot more popular among residents of Melbourne and the state of Victoria who are subjected to it than to a large portion of the outside world. Part of this discrepancy is due to Australia having an entire culture built around the phrase “No worries, whatever you reckon’s a fair thing,” but another part is the fact that people in other self-proclaimed democracies are accustomed to having a bill of rights to protect them against such intrusive overreach.

Many Australians are unaware of this, but we are in fact the only developed democracy that does not have a bill of rights built into its legal infrastructure. An inordinate amount of trust is instead placed upon our legislature and judicial system to always do the right thing on a case-by-case basis, a premise that has been fully discredited by things like the Facebook post arrests, the silencing of sexual assault victims in Victoria, the police raids on two Australian journalists last year, the almost-instituted ban on reporting political corruption in Queensland, and the trial, conviction, sentencing and imprisonment of a man entirely in secret whose very identity itself is classified, just to pick from a few very recent examples.

As we’ve discussed previously, it’s a guarantee that there will be authoritarian agendas rolled out during the Covid-19 pandemic which our rulers have no intention of ever fully rolling back. We know this because that’s what always happens; the US Patriot Act was mostly already written prior to 9/11 and the pre-planned Orwellian measures were simply slid in at a time of chaos and confusion when people were less likely to push back on creeping authoritarianism.

They Are Rolling Out The Architecture Of Oppression Now Because They Fear The People

“The escalations in internet censorship and the escalations in surveillance are both directed at a last-ditch effort to control the masses before control is lost forever”https://t.co/buiSaOP4B9

— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) April 11, 2020

The trouble is, we can’t see it.

For months I’ve been getting many people telling me every day that I need to be sounding the alarm about this virus giving cover for an authoritarian power grab that will thrust us into a dystopia from which we will never recover. Few of them can agree on exactly what form this power grab is taking, and none can lucidly explain in their own words exactly what they know and how they know it when I ask them to, but they want me to write essays defending their viewpoint.

It’s not that they’re wrong to be suspicious; again, it’s a guarantee that authoritarians and plutocrats are at the very least opportunistically shoring up power and wealth for themselves in a whole host of ways amid the confusing upheavals of 2020. It’s just that I can’t write essays which I can competently defend about things I cannot see. The level of evidence and argumentation that I apply to the rest of my work simply is not there at this time. I’ve been looking at this thing from every angle, and a powerful evidence-based argument for any kind of centralized monolithic global power grab in relation to this virus just isn’t forthcoming.

This doesn’t mean such a power grab doesn’t exist, it just means that if it does exist, the bulk of it is happening in secret. And it is a very safe bet that there are at the very least a lot of agendas being planned within establishment power structures around the world which we would object to if they weren’t hidden behind thick veils of corporate, financial, and government opacity.

Which brings us to Julian Assange, whose extradition trial of world-shaping importance is set to resume a few hours from this writing.

#Assange makes his way to date with destiny he always predicted | Andrew Fowler | Sydney Morning Herald @smh #AssangeCasehttps://t.co/WCqoOpp37G

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) September 6, 2020

Assange started a leak publishing outlet on the premise that corrupt power can be fought with the light of truth. Corrupt power responded by smearing, torturing and imprisoning him, thereby proving his thesis unassailably correct. The depravity of the powerful can only operate behind veils of secrecy, because if it happened out in the open our greatly outnumbered rulers would risk finding themselves on the wrong end of a guillotine blade. Assange sought to hold power in check by reducing the amount of hiding space it has for its malfeasance, which is why he is currently behind bars.

If we had transparency for the powerful as we ought, there wouldn’t be any wild theorizing about what they’re up to behind the walls of secrecy. Indeed, the various agendas that are doubtless being schemed toward by oligarchs and unaccountable government agencies wouldn’t even exist, because people only plot such evils when they are out of the public eye. Whatever’s going on with this virus would be clear as day, and the fact that people are paranoid and distrustful of authority figures about the matter is solely the fault of those authority figures’ refusal to have transparency and accountability.

The more secrecy the powerful are able to obtain, the more wars they start, the more exploitation, oppression and thievery they can get away with, the more power they can steal from the people and shift to themselves. Which is precisely why they are going after a journalist who made it his vocation to deprive them of secrecy.

As Jonathan Cook recently put it,

“Assange had to be made to suffer horribly and in public — to be made an example of — to deter other journalists from ever following in his footsteps. He is the modern equivalent of a severed head on a pike displayed at the city gates.”

We must not allow them to get away with this. Especially now, when transparency for the powerful is more important than ever.

Looking at you, Australia.

*  *  *

Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, throwing some money into my tip jar on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my books Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone and Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.

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