Author: admin

Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have once again ramped up operations along the southern Lebanese border at a moment Hezbollah leadership has declared it is “fully prepared for war with Israel”.

The latest escalation came Wednesday when an Israeli drone targeted a car full of Hezbollah operatives just inside Syria near the border with Lebanon. The Shia resistance organization said all escaped alive and without injury in what’s become an increasingly common IDF tactic – assassination attempt by drone. 

However, it’s extremely rare that such an assassination attempt be caught on video. But on Friday CCTV footage emerged capturing the moment of the strike, appearing in Arabic and Israeli media:

CCTV footage from the alleged IDF drone strike 2 days ago on the Hezbollah vehicle on the Syrian-Lebanese border. pic.twitter.com/1SoH0X5XBy

— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) April 17, 2020

It’s being widely reported that there was initial strike – either a missed strike or possibly a ‘warning’ – followed by a missile which destroyed the vehicle. 

An eyewitness told AFP “An Israeli drone first struck near a car transporting Hezbollah members,” but indicated “The passengers got out before it was then directly hit in a second strike” – leaving no casualties. 

Syria’s state SANA news service also confirmed the attack and breach of its sovereign territory in the IDF operation. 

Since the beginning of the nine-year long proxy war in Syria, Israel has attacked inside Syria hundreds of times and over the past years has vowed to roll back Iran’s presence inside the country – there at the invitation of the Assad government. 

Late Friday the IDF reported fence damage along the Isreali-Lebanese border. “This is a severe event. We hold the Lebanese government responsible for actions from its territory,” the IDF said in a statement.

It’s unclear who among Hezbollah’s ranks was the intended target of Wednesday’s UAV strike, however, regional media reporting indicated a “top Hezbollah security official” was in the car and escaped.

There’s been no confirmation of who exactly was in the car, but they were likely on their way to Damascus for high level meetings.

Authored by William Hartung and Ben Freeman via TheNation.com,

Arms industry lobbyists are addressing this pandemic and preparing for the next by pushing weapons sales…

There’s a battle brewing for the future of national security spending.

On one side, there’s a growing bipartisan consensus that the coronavirus has fundamentally changed the way we should think about national security. Ben Rhodes, former deputy national security adviser in the Obama White House, recently argued in The Atlantic that we have to rethink the orientation and priorities of our government, and “it makes no sense that the Pentagon budget is 13 times larger than the entire international-affairs budget, which funds the State Department, USAID, and global programs at other agencies.”

Kori Schake, the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said the bottom line is that “we’re going to see enormous downward pressure on defense spending because of other urgent American national needs like health care.”

Even conservative commentators like Max Boot, who less than two years ago wrote, “the United States is losing the ability to defend itself,” recently wrote that “Instead of simply pouring more money into the Pentagon, we need to develop new capacities to combat foreign disinformation, transition away from carbon fuels and stop the spread of pandemics.”

On the other side, despite this support from across the political spectrum to reduce the Pentagon’s budget and focus more on non-military threats to national security – an argument the Center for International Policy’s Sustainable Defense Task Force made long before the coronavirus pandemic – there stands one of the most powerful players in American politics: the military-industrial complex.

If history is any indication, the military-industrial complex isn’t going down without a fight, nor is the Pentagon budget. Through their droves of lobbyists, the revolving door between the Pentagon, contractors, and Congress, and the promise of providing jobs to every Congressional district, Pentagon contractors have kept the defense budget artificially inflated for years at the expense of funding for things like the Centers for Disease Control and other agencies that can help fight disease outbreaks. And, in this new coronavirus era, they’re using the same playbook once again.

The power of the military-industrial complex to keep the defense budget artificially high has perhaps never been more apparent than in the last nine years when the Pentagon budget was under perpetual threat of being reduced after passage of the Budget Control Act in 2011 (BCA). While Pentagon contractors decry the damage wreaked by the BCA, their lobbyists and advocates omit one key fact: The defense budget has actually increased under the BCA to roughly $750 billion per year, well above the levels reached during the Vietnam or Korean Wars.

After the BCA was enacted, military spending was to be capped at an ample $5.4 trillion over 10 years, but over that same time period the US actually spent $5.7 trillion on the military. This was largely because Congress and presidents Obama and Trump consistently agreed to lift the caps on defense spending in addition to using the Overseas Contingency Operations account—which has been described as a slush fund—to dodge the spending caps.

The arms lobby is well-positioned to exert influence over Pentagon spending going forward.  Hundreds of former senior government officials—645 in 2018 alone, according to the Project on Government Oversight—have gone through the “revolving door’ to work for the defense industry as lobbyists, executives, consultants, or board members. This gives them an inside track on debates over budget priorities. And, the revolving door swings both ways.

The last three secretaries of defense have been a former board member of General Dynamics, a former Boeing executive, and the former chief lobbyist for Raytheon, respectively. Most importantly of all, President Trump has been the greatest champion of the arms industry, touting (and exaggerating) the number of jobs created by arms sales to countries like Saudi Arabia.

This massive influence operation has already led to early wins for the arms makers in the coronavirus era. Boeing successfully pushed for billions in aid to the arms industry in the $2 trillion stimulus bill, and arms industry lobbyists successfully pushed to get weapons makers deemed “essential” businesses during the coronavirus pandemic.

While the battle to defeat this pandemic rages, the battle to defeat the next one has already begun, and so far, arms industry lobbyists are winning. They’re making sure that Pentagon contractors continue to thrive, even as much more pressing priorities than bomb making demand our attention. Instead of protecting contractor profits, Congress must choose to protect the American people from the very real threats that are killing thousands of Americans as we speak.

New footage of China’s next-generation assault rifle, called the QBZ-191, recently appeared on state-owned broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV), reported Defense Blog. 

QBZ-191 chambers a 5.8 × 42 mm round, which will replace the QBZ-95 assault rifle in service with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). CCTV says the new lightweight assault rifle was developed by the No. 208 Research Institute of China Ordnance Industries. 

“According to sources, the new rifle is chambered in the standard 5.8x42mm caliber using a new type of rounds that have better performance on medium to long-range. It has an effective firing range of 300 m for the carbine version and 400 m for the assault rifle version with a rate of fire of 750 rpm (Rounds Per Minute),” Defense Blog said.

QBZ-191’s design is very similar to modern bullpup-style rifles designed in Europe and the US with a top Picatinny rail for attachments. The weapon is outfitted with a new optical device, presumably a red dot sight. 

The PLA has been on the hunt for several years to replace its legacy QBZ-95 assault rifle. It wasn’t until the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China in 2019, that a military parade via the PLA revealed the new weapon. 

Authored by Mike Whitney via The Unz Review,

The Russia-Saudi oil-price war is a fabrication concocted by the media. There’s not a word of truth to any of it. Yes, there was a dust up at an OPEC meeting in early March that led to production increases and plunging prices. That part is true.

But Saudi Arabia’s oil-dumping strategy wasn’t aimed at Russia, it was aimed at US shale oil producers. But not for the reasons you’ve read about in the media.

The Saudis aren’t trying to destroy the US shale oil business. That’s another fiction. They just want US producers to play by the rules and pitch in when prices need support. That might seem like a stretch, but it’s true.

You see, US oil producers are not what-you’d-call “team players”. They don’t cooperate with foreign producers, they’re not willing to share the costs of flagging demand, and they never lift a finger to support prices. US oil producers are the next-door-neighbor that parks his beat-up Plymouth on the front lawn and then surrounds it with rusty appliances. They don’t care about anyone but themselves.

What Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman want is for US producers to share the pain of oil production cuts in order to stabilize prices. It’s an entirely reasonable request. Here’s a clip from an article at oilprice.com that helps to explain what’s really going on:

“… there was a sliver of hope that oil prices may rebound after Reuters reported that Saudi Arabia, Russia and allied oil producers will agree to deep cuts to their crude output at talks this week but only if the United States and several others join in with curbs to help prop up prices that have been hammered by the coronavirus crisis. However, in an attempt to have its cake and eat it too, the U.S. DOE said on Tuesday that U.S. output is already falling without government action, in line with the White House’s insistence that it would not intervene in the private markets….

… OPEC+ will require the United States to make cuts in order to come to an agreement: The EIA report today demonstrates that there are already projected cuts of 2 (million bpd), without any intervention from the federal government,” the U.S. Energy Department said.

That is not enough for OPEC+ however, and certainly not Russia, which on Wednesday made clear that market-driven declines in oil production shouldn’t be considered as cuts intended to stabilize the market, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov tells reporters on conference call.

“These are completely different cuts. You are comparing the overall demand drop with cuts to stabilize global markets. It’s like comparing length and width,” Peskov said…..Moscow’s participation is highly contingent on the US, and is unlikely to agree to output cuts if the US does not join the effort.” (“Historic Oil Deal On The Verge Of Collapse As Russia Balks At U.S. ‘Cuts’”, oilprice.com)

Putin is being reasonable and fair. If everyone else is forced to cut supply, then US oil producers should have to cut supply too. But they don’t want to share the pain, so they’ve settled on a strategy for weaseling out of it. They want their reductions in output (from weak demand during the pandemic) to count as “production cuts”. They even have a name for this swindle, they call it “organic production cuts”, which means no cuts at all. This is the way hucksters do business not responsible adults.

What does Putin want from this deal?

Price stability. Yes, he’d like to see prices settle somewhere north of $45 per barrel but that’s not going to happen for a while. The combination of a weaker demand (due to the coronavirus) and oversupply (from the Saudis flooding the market) have ensured that prices will remain low for the foreseeable future. Even so, Putin understood what the Saudis were doing by flooding the market, and he knew it wasn’t directed at Russia. The Saudis were trying to persuade US oil producers to stop freeloading and cut production like everyone else. That’s the long and short of it. Check out this excerpt from an article by oil expert, Simon Watkins at oilprice.com:

“Saudi Arabia was continually peeved …(because) its efforts to keep oil prices up through various OPEC and OPEC+ agreements were allowing these very shale producers to make a lot more money than the Saudis, relatively speaking. The reason for this was that U.S. shale producers…. were not bound in to the OPEC/OPEC+ production quotas so could fill the output gaps created by OPEC producers.” (“The Sad Truth About The OPEC+ Production Cut”, Simon Watkins, oilprice.com)

This is what the media fails to tell their readers, that US oil producers– who don’t participate in any collective effort to stabilize prices– have been exploiting OPEC production quotas in order to fatten the bottom line at the expense of others. US producers figured out how to game the system and make a bundle in the process. Is it any wonder why the Saudis were pissed?? Here’s more from the same article:

“This allowed the U.S. a rolling 3-4 million bpd advantage over Saudi in the oil exports game, meaning that it quickly became the world’s number one oil producer…. Hence, Saudi Arabia decided initially to unilaterally announce its intention for the last OPEC+ deal to be much bigger than that which it had pre-agreed with Russia, hoping to ambush the Russians into agreeing. Russia, however, turned around and told Saudi Arabia to figuratively go and reproduce with itself. MbS,… then decided to launch an all-out price war.” (oilprice.com)

So you can see that this really had nothing to do with Russian at all. The Crown Prince was simply frustrated at the way US oil producers were gaming the system, which is why he felt like he had to respond by flooding the market. The obvious target was the US shale oil industry that was taking advantage of the quotas, refusing to cooperate with fellow oil producers and generally freeloading off the existing quota system.

And what’s funny, is that as soon as the Saudis started putting the screws to the US fracking gang, they all scampered off to Washington en masse to beg for help from Papa Trump. Which is why Trump decided to make emergency calls to Moscow and Riyadh to see if he could hash out a deal.

It’s worth noting that domestic oil producers have been involved in other dodgy activities in the past. Check out this excerpt from an article in the Guardian in 2014, the last time oil prices crashed:

“After standing at well over $110 a barrel in the summer, the cost of crude has collapsed. Prices are down by a quarter in the past three months….

Think about how the Obama administration sees the state of the world. It wants Tehran to come to heel over its nuclear programme. It wants Vladimir Putin to back off in eastern Ukraine. But after recent experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, the White House has no desire to put American boots on the ground. Instead, with the help of its Saudi ally, Washington is trying to drive down the oil price by flooding an already weak market with crude. As the Russians and the Iranians are heavily dependent on oil exports, the assumption is that they will become easier to deal with…

The Saudis did something similar in the mid-1980s. Then, the geopolitical motivation for a move that sent the oil price to below $10 a barrel was to destabilize Saddam Hussein’s regime….

Washington’s willingness to play the oil card stems from the belief that domestic supplies of energy from fracking make it possible for the US to become the world’s biggest oil producer. In a speech last year, Tom Donilon, then Barack Obama’s national security adviser, said the US was now less vulnerable to global oil shocks. The cushion provided by shale oil and gas “affords us a stronger hand in pursuing and implementing our national security goals”. (“Stakes are high as US plays the oil card against Iran and Russia”, The Guardian)

This excerpt shows that Washington is more than willing to use the “oil card” if it helps to achieve its geopolitical objectives. Not surprisingly, good buddy, Saudi Arabia, has historically played a key role in helping to promote those goals. The current incident, however, is the exact opposite. The Saudis aren’t helping the US achieve its objectives, quite the contrary, they’re lashing out in frustration. They feel like they’re being squeezed by Washington (and US producers) and they want to prove that they have the means to fight back. Flooding the market was just MBS’s way of “letting off steam”.

Trump understands this, but he also understands who ultimately calls the shots, which is why he took the unusual step of explicitly warning the Saudis that they’d better shape up and step in line or there’d be hell to pay. Here’s a little background that will help to connect the dots:

“..the deal made in 1945 between the U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Saudi King at the time, Abdulaziz, that has defined the relationship between the two countries ever since… the deal that was struck between the two men on board the U.S. Navy cruiser Quincy… was that the U.S. would receive all of the oil supplies it needed for as long as Saudi Arabia had oil in place, in return for which the U.S. would guarantee the security of the ruling House of Saud. The deal has altered slightly ever since the rise of the U.S. shale oil industry and Saudi Arabia’s attempt to destroy it from 2014 to 2016, in that the U.S. still guarantees the security of the House of Saud but it also expects Saudi Arabia not only to supply the U.S. with whatever oil it needs for as long as it can but also – and this is key to everything that has followed – it also allows the U.S. shale industry to continue to function and to grow.

As far as the U.S. is concerned, if t his means that the Saudis lose out to U.S. shale producers by keeping oil prices up but losing out on export opportunities to these U.S. firms then tough..

As U.S. President Donald Trump has made clear whenever he has sensed a lack of understanding on the part of Saudi Arabia for the huge benefit that the U.S. is doing the ruling family: “He [Saudi King Salman] would not last in power for two weeks without the backing of the U.S. military.” (“The Sad Truth About The OPEC+ Production Cut”, Simon Watkins, Oil Price)

Trump felt like he had to remind the Saudis how the system actually works: Washington gives the orders and the Saudi’s obey. Simple, right? In fact, the Crown Prince has already slashed oil production dramatically and is fully complying with Trump’s directives, because he knows if he doesn’t, he’s going to wind up like Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi.

Meanwhile, US shale oil producers won’t be required to make any cuts at all or, as the New York Times puts it: “It was not immediately clear if the Trump administration made a formal commitment to cut production in the United States.”

Got that? So everyone else cuts production, everyone else sees their revenues shrink, and everyone else pitches-in to put a floor under prices. Everyone except the “exceptional” American oil producers from the exceptional United States. They don’t have to do a damn thing.

You know the coronavirus restrictions in place globally are serious when its easier to get back to Earth from the International Space Station than it is to get home once you’ve touched back down on the blue planet. 

NASA astronauts Andrew Morgan and Jessica Meir are being forced to take a major detour on their way home from the Kazakh steppe, where they landed early Friday morning. After 205 days in space, more than 3200 orbits around the Earth and a trip of 86.9 million miles, the astronauts still have to take a 186 mile detour before boarding a flight back to the U.S.

The astronaut’s Soyuz MS-15 capsule touched down southeast of the Kazakh town of Dzhezkazgan at 1117 local time, according to Reuters, as was planned.

But all of Kazakhstan’s provinces are in lockdown as a result of coronavirus quarantines, so search and rescue teams were unable to set up a base in Dzhezkazgan for the astronauts.

According to Vyacheslav Rogozhnikov, the deputy head of Russia’s Federal Medical Biological Agency, the Baikonur cosmodrome spaceport, which is rented by Russia despite being in Kazakhstan, was instead being used as a base for the crew. 

The U.S. astronauts will then have to endure a 186 mile drive to Kzylorda, where they will then board a NASA aircraft that will finally wind up taking them home. 

You can watch the livestream of the landing, as it happened early Friday morning, here:

 

Authored by Natalia Braun via TheMindUnleashed.com,

What we were warned about but turned a blind eye to and did not expect in the Western world to this extent, happened: we found ourselves in the midst of a pandemic.

Social distancing, quarantine and hygienic practices are essential behavioural methods in such times to reduce spreading of the new virus and mortality. But these precautionary measures, whether imposed or consciously chosen to protect ourselves and the persons at risk against the coronavirus, could be challenging for us humans as we are social beings. They can be particularly tough to those who are prone to anxiety and depression. 

Still, solitude should not mean loneliness and has also its positive sides. Here is some practical advice on how to cope with the challenges we may face during quarantine or a lockdown and what we can proactively do for our mental health. In the present distress, some of these things we used to take for granted might sink into oblivion. 

• Follow recommendations for protecting yourself.

• Stop following every news on the virus. Read only serious, respected media, arrange a limited time for that and stick to it.

• Stay in touch with your loved ones and friends via telephone and virtual forms of communication. 

• Avoid making major life decisions as far as possible. This is not the right time for that: too much unpredictability and uncertainty for the long-term future, too many emotions might mislead you and cause problems in the future.

• Clean up your home place: cleaning up your living space has an effect of cleaning up and sorting out your mind and soul. You could certainly find a wardrobe, a box or a bookshelf you’ve always wanted to sort out or rearrange but never got around to it. Now it’s a good time to do that.

• Exercise every day. Physical health plays a major role in maintaining good mental health. Exercise releases chemicals like endorphins and serotonin that improve your mood and reduce stress and the symptoms of anxiety and depression. You may try yoga (five simple but very effective exercises that activate your whole body – and mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71jaJu0dc98) or put on some rhythmic music and dance (simple movements that are fun and very effective, too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p1ubjp_VtA. For the fans of Latin music and dance among us, there is a wonderful way to dance alone, too: try salsa suelta, a solo form of Cuban salsa. It will not only bring in motion your whole body, but boost your energy, mood and zest for life. More on salsa suelta with a great video: http://www.mivida.com.au/portfolio/salsa-suelta/. As my research shows, dance improves health and wellbeing and is an effective stress coping mechanism.

• Try some further forms of creative arts, they are powerful in stress reduction. There is lots of evidence that making art significantly lowers stress-related hormone cortisol. Art-making is being experienced as relaxing, enjoyable, helpful for learning about new aspects of self, and freeing from constraints. As Picasso said: “Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” Besides dancing, it could be painting, drawing, playing piano or some other instrument. But also pottery, baking and knitting are very creative and relaxing activities that additionally involve tactile sensations, important in countering loneliness. 

• If you have indoor plants, a balcony or a terrace, you might engage into some kind of gardening and reconcile with nature. Gardening has a positive effect on our mental health, which includes relaxation, positive feelings, staying in the present moment, coping with difficult emotions, and feeling in control. Spending some time in the sun boosts your vitamin D balance which is important for maintaining healthy bones.

• Keep a diary. Writing down your feelings and thoughts may help sort them out and calm down. You may even want to try poetry writing – you never know what hidden talents you may have.

• Try relaxation techniques like meditation, diaphragmatic breathing or progressive muscle relaxation: tightening an individual muscle group, holding it for a while and then relaxing it.

• As our mind and body are deeply interconnected, eat healthy: choose nutrition rich foods, especially those that strengthen your immune system. Food supplements like L-arginine and reishi mushroom would additionally boost your immune system. 

• Get enough sleep. Good sleep is crucial for countering anxious and depressive mood and overall for good mental and physical health. Try to wake up and go to bed at more or less the same time and get at least 8 hours of sleep. Don’t look at your phone or tablet (which you are hopefully disinfecting regularly) at least an hour before going to bed, don’t read, listen or watch any news. Read a good, relaxing book instead. Make power naps in the afternoons. 

• All that being said, maintain daily routine. Make a schedule and try to stick to it.

• But first and foremost – try to live in the moment and enjoy whatever you do, also if it’s just doing nothing. You don’t have to achieve anything nor prove yourself. You are ok as you are. 

We are living in trying times, which to a considerable degree are brought about by ourselves. A number of researchers today think that it is actually humanity’s destruction of biodiversity that creates the conditions for new viruses and diseases such as Covid-19 to arise. Nobody knows when we’ll return to “normality” and what kind of “normality” it will be. But all things pass and this pandemic will pass, too, even if in the long term we most probably will often deal with the outbreaks of infectious diseases. Let’s take it as an opportunity to learn out of it and reflect. We took lots of things for granted and learn to appreciate and cherish them now. In our rush for achievement, we forgot to pay attention – to these small but important things, to our environment, to those around us, to ourselves.

Try to stay mindful, fully present in the here-and-now, and enjoy the silence. For this, too, will pass. 

A top FBI official has warned that foreign governments are seeking to break into American companies’ cyber systems where crucial coronavirus research data is stored. 

“We certainly have seen reconnaissance activity, and some intrusions, into some of those institutions, especially those that have publicly identified themselves as working on COVID-related research,” FBI Deputy Assistant Director for the FBI Cyber Division Tonya Ugoretz told an Aspen Institute online panel discussion.

The FBI official described the spike in state-backed hacking cases comes as several Western bio-research companies could be on the cusp of developing breakthrough treatments and potentially a vaccine related to the ongoing pandemic, which over the past weeks has been ravaging the United States as the new global epicenter. 

The flipside to companies publicizing their research, Ugoretz said in her comments this week, “is that it kind of makes them a mark for other nation-states that are interested in gleaning details about what exactly they’re doing and maybe even stealing proprietary information that those institutions have.”

“For example, if we see that a secure institution is a victim or has been targeted, we, of course, go out and work with them,” Ugoretz continued. “Ideally, what we are doing is talking to healthcare institutions and research institutions before they have been a victim so that we can use the intelligence we have to identify the trends and identify who else is in the same category of the victims.”

She noted the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center currently receives some 3,000 to 4,000 calls per day. Prior to the pandemic crisis hitting North America this figure was at 1,000.

The official did not name specific countries or bad actors; however, it follows a report from the WHO earlier this month, which described “a sustained digital bombardment” by hackers described as seeking internal information on the deadly coronavirus, further said to be “more than doubled” amid the pandemic crisis.

Western intelligence sources in early April fingered Iran as being behind the bulk of recent alleged hacks of international health organizations, including the UN.

Bill Evanina, Director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, was cited by Reuters in the latest report as saying:

“Medical research organizations and those who work for them should be vigilant against threat actors seeking to steal intellectual property or other sensitive data related to America’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

“Now is the time to protect the critical research you’re conducting,” he added.

The FBI further declined to comment on specific pending investigations. It’s unclear whether the message was intended as purely a warning against potential future hacks, or the degree to which US companies have already experienced data thefts. The FBI’s Ugoretz did say there were confirmed “intrusions” into “some” research institutions, however.

Authored by Jon Street via Campus Reform,

Thousands of colleges across the country are being infused with billions of dollars in cash after they were forced to close their campuses and move classes online amid the coronavirus pandemic. 

The Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund is part of the $2 trillion CARES Act that was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump. The fund contains a total of about $14.2 billion for both private and public colleges and universities across the U.S.

In a letter to college presidents dated April 9, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos wrote that “the most significant portion of that funding allocation provides that $12.56 billion will be distributed to institutions using a formula based on student enrollment,” adding that at least 50 percent of the money to each institution “must be reserved to provide students with emergency financial aid grants to help cover expenses related to the disruption of campus operations due to coronavirus.” 

The most money any university is receiving is about $63.5 million while $291 was the least amount received by any academic institution. 

Campus Reform identified the ten universities receiving the most money from the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund, courtesy of the American taxpayer.

1. Arizona State University- $63.5 million

2. Pennsylvania State University- $54.9 million

3. Rutgers University- $54.1 million

4. University of Central Florida- $51 million

5. Miami Dade College- $49 million

6. Georgia State University- $45.2 million

7. California State University-Northridge- $44.6 million

8. The Ohio State University- $42.8 million

9. California State University- Long Beach- $41.7 million

10. California State University- Fullerton- $41 million

The historic OPEC+ “Mexican Standoff” production cut came and went, and after a very short kneejerk spike higher oil has continued to plunge to historic lows for the two reasons we laid out previously: i) the production cut was not nearly enough to offset the demand collapse of as much as 36 million barrels, and ii) every day that tens of millions of excess barrels are produced brings us one day closer to that catastrophic D-day when oil storage runs out.

Of course, just like not all oil producers are equal – recall Goldman recently predicted that landlocked producers may see oil prices go negative, as they run out of buyers or places where to store the oil, while tanker access to most Brent exporters means that the price of Brent will not drop materially below $20 – not all storage is equal either, and while Cushing and ARA commercial storage is expected to hit full in just a few months at the current rate of net supply, many producers are using water storage as a flexible alternative.

As a result, traders are now storing an estimated record 160 million barrels of oil on ships – double the level from two weeks ago as they seek to tackle a glut of stocks, Reuters reportsas traders have rushed to find storage on land and at sea in what is believed to be the biggest oil glut in history.

The surge in water storage, which started with Saudi Arabia unleashing an armada of tankers last month to flood the world with cheap oil…

… has swept the globe and shipping sources say oil held in floating storage on tankers had reached at least 160 million barrels including 60 supertankers, aka very large crude carriers (VLCCs), which can each hold 2 million barrels. This compared with just 25 to 40 VLCCs already chartered with storage options at the start of April and fewer than 10 VLCCs in February, the sources said adding that smaller tankers were also being used, which was also boosting volumes being held at anchor.

The last time floating storage reached levels close to this was in 2009, when traders stored over 100 million barrels at sea before offloading stocks; the plunge in oil prices then prompted one of our very first posts in January 2009 “Risk-Free Profit Idea of the Day” in which we explained how to benefit from $25 contango.

Putting naval oil infrastructure in context, the red dots show oil-tankers transporting over 100 million barrels each day. Now add another 60 million barrels to begin..

“This is an unprecedented time in the history of tankers and while VLCC tanker storage is garnering the headlines, smaller crude and product tankers are also being used for storage,” said BTIG shipping analyst Gregory Lewis.

Locations typically include the U.S. Gulf and Singapore, where major oil hubs are situated. A supercontango that briefly emerged in 2016 when oil prices also crashed for a period of time, resulted in the following stunning navel map of tankers parked off Singapore.

As mentioned above, the crude market is currently trading in deep contango, where forward prices are higher (in some cases much higher)than immediate prices.

The ability to buy a barrel of oil cheap today and lock in a profit by selling it in the future, encourages traders to park barrels in storage in the hopes of selling them for a profit later.

And with the contango barely budging, analysts – who notes that there are over 770 VLCCs in the world – estimate that as many as 100 to 200 supertankers could be deployed for floating storage in coming months.

“The eventual wind down of this inventory glut will be most painful to tanker demand, but in the meantime floating storage remains the only outlet for a mismatched production and consumption backdrop,” said Jonathan Chappell with investment banking advisory Evercore ISI

The Wall Street Journal‘s Deepa Seetharaman wants us to know that while poor billionaire Bill Gates has ‘long been a target for online trolls,’ that ‘the social-media attacks have intensified’ as the Micrrosoft co-founder and World Health Organization (WHO) benefactor has become the left’s de-facto coronavirus czar.

Seetharaman suggests that the attacks have increased due to Gates’s angry criticism towards President Trump, who halted funding to the WHO due to the organization’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and its allegiance to China.

In the 24 hours after Mr. Gates’s comments, his Twitter account was mentioned at least 270,000 times—more than 30 times more than average—mainly by angry supporters of President Trump, according to Clemson University researchers. Mr. Gates’s Instagram post from April 5 drew an additional 45,000 comments in that same 24-hour period. The post now has more than 225,000 comments. –WSJ

Perhaps the ‘conspiracy theorists’ are having a little trouble digesting the fact that Gates – whose vaccine efforts in India were blamed for a devastating non-polio acute flaccid paralysis (NPAFP) epidemic that paralyzed 490,000 children – coincidentally hosted an October, 2019 high-level ‘pandemic simulation’ in New York called Event 201 which specifically focused on coronavirus and projected over 65 million deaths worldwide.

Combine that with Gates’ recent comments about mass vaccination and biometric identification in order to ‘open up’ the country and allow people to attend mass gatherings – an idea which Dr. Anthony Fauci said “has merit,” and so-called conspiracy theorists have plenty of dots to connect.

In a new interview, Bill Gates authoritatively states that mass public gatherings will not come back “at all” until we have mass vaccination. Who made him king of the world? https://t.co/siW7bZ9yGc … pic.twitter.com/ivaCI8eAEl

— Alternative News (@NewsAlternative) April 4, 2020

MIT is working on a “quantum tattoo” that will mark you with an invisible identifier while also delivering a vaccine. Can you guess who is the premiere donor of the project? https://t.co/ZEWqCUVGwI pic.twitter.com/jFVip4DaqZ

— Roosh (@rooshv) April 4, 2020

According to the Journal, “social-media platforms remain fertile ground for virus-related conspiracies and online harassment, despite repeated pledges by the companies to crack down on such activity.”

So – Gates is being harassed and nobody is stopping these thought criminals with their menacing opinions. And of course, ‘bots’ are also being blameed for amplifying ‘conspiracy claims’ – since there can’t be that many real humans with bad things to say about Mr. Gates.

“I’ve never seen a time where more mis- and disinformation has flowed than this coronavirus period,” said Univsity of Texas assistant professor Sam Woolley, who has ‘studied disinformation for nearly a decade.’

Some antivaccine activists and conspiracy-minded posters encouraged their followers across social media to attack Mr. Gates on Instagram, a form of harassment called “brigading” in which people coordinate attacks and hijack conversations online, according to a review of accounts. This week, one Instagram account told its 52,000 followers that “it wouldn’t be a bad thing for all of us to go visit Bill Gates Instagram and let him know what you think.” A spokeswoman for the Gates Foundation declined to comment. –WSJ

According to the report, Facebook is now “looking at this behavior carefully to determine whether it violates our policies. People on our services are allowed to speak freely, and do so in an organized way, but we remove accounts that are fake or designed to mislead,” and will begin notifying users who have engaged with what they deem misinformation that they’ve been hoodwinked by bad actors in cyberspace.

How nice! Maybe Facebook will hire someone from the Gates foundation to do their fact checking?