“Horrendous” Market Breadth “Stinks To High Heaven”, Screams Imminent Risk-Off

“Horrendous” Market Breadth “Stinks To High Heaven”, Screams Imminent Risk-Off

Tyler Durden

Sun, 08/23/2020 – 10:35

With the S&P500 closing at a new all time high just shy of 3,400 on Friday, one may be tempted to think that there is a raging bull market (if one sparked by trillions in Fed liquidity, and certainly not due to economic fundamentals). Alas, one couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, the series of consecutive record highs last week have been entirely on the back of just a handful of stocks as market breadth has collapsed to levels that typically precede major downward market crashes.

While we previously discussed the unprecedented market cap concentration of just a handful of companies (spoiler alert: it’s the FAAMGs with AAPL surpassing the $2 trillion barrier last week, and then adding a quick $100 billion in market cap on Friday on no news and merely due to a surge in call buying ahead of Monday’s stock split record date, which pushed the stock within inches of $500/share) consider that all of last week’s record highs in the S&P were set on negative breadth, meaning that there were more decliners than advancers.

It gets better: as the traditionally bullish and cheerful Bloomberg commentator Andrew Cinko writes, “Friday was even more outlandish in terms of narrowness” as it wasn’t a market of stocks on Friday, but just one single stock that moved the market (guess which one):

  • 87% of DJIA point gain came from Apple: (index +191pts vs AAPL’s contribution 167pts)
  • 103% of S&P 500 increase (11.7 vs 12.0)
  • 148% of Nasdaq Composite (46.9 vs 69.7)
  • 105% of Nasdaq 100 (78.1 vs 81.8)

As Cinko explains, extending an analogy we first made last week…

… it’s really the S&P1 and the reason for Friday’s dismal move “is simply math with Apple’s market cap so immense it is slowly but surely becoming the American stock market.”

That realization may prompt the index’s managers to make some sort of capitalization-weighted adjustment to give the little guys a chance, though such mathematical manipulations don’t change the fact that Apple and its mega-cap tech peers are eating the world.

Meanwhile, as we first discussed in “This Is What The S&P Would Look Like Without The 5 Megacap Tech Stocks“, Cinko notes that “we already have a solution in the equal-weighted S&P 500, which sank 1.54% last week versus a 0.72% rise for the cap-weighted version” which alone makes more sense given the negative breadth and the impact of just one stock.

As an aside, while it’s beyond the scope of this article to discuss last week’s berserk move in AAPL stock, we will note that the put-call skew in AAPL has absolutely imploded in recent days as a result of an unprecedented surge in call buying which due to positive gamma, is single-handedly pushing AAPL stock to daily record highs, which in turn leads to more call buying, pushing the stock even higher, and so on.

As a reminder, as we described first one month ago in “Goldman spot a historic inversion in the market“, “Negative skew is a relatively rare statistic for large cap names such as AMZN (where three month skew is currently at all-time lows), implying crowding in long AMZN calls.” Just replace AMZN with AAPL and you know all there is to know about what is pushing not just AAPL but the entire market higher.

But wait, there’s more.

As Larry McDonald writes in his latest Bear Traps report, “just 44, or 1.4% of the 3,068 NYSE issues traded hit new 52-week highs; on the Nasdaq, it was 137, or 4.0% of 3,450 issues traded. The indexes don’t have much company at these rarefied levels. The minuscule number of equities at 52-week highs with the index right at the highs is unprecedented and shows just how weak current breadth is.”

It gets worse: as McDonald further notes, the number of stocks trading above their 200DMA has also collapsed, from a relatively healthy 67% in February (just before the market crashed), to just 47% currently.

And while we observed above that all the upside in the market on Friday was entirely due to Apple, which helped the Nasdaq notch a 0.4% gain to a new all time high, here is just how bad it was away from Apple, where only 29% of stocks on the Nasdaq managed to close up on Friday (and 31% on Thursday), which according to McDonald “was the lowest in history, by far with 805 up and 1878 stocks down.”

Said otherwise, the Nasdaq closed not only green but at an all time high even as 70% of issues closed in the red. This was the 5th worst Advance/Decline day in the last 30 years.

What about the S&P? Here, Bloomberg’s Andrew Cinko again provides some perspective, writing that when “looking back for a five-day S&P 500 gain of 0.72% or more with median five-day breadth of 34% or less shows 24 other periods. But they do cluster, and the chart below shows only those occurrences for 1999/2000, 2003, 2008, 2010, 2014/2015 and this year.”

One can bucket the occurrences like this:

  • Post-bear market rallies that stalled: 2003, 2010
  • Bubble trouble: 1999/2000, 2008
  • Economic growth scares after a long run: 2014/2015

The problem, as Cinko notes, is that 2020’s pandemic-induced economic crash and the fastest recovery ever from a bear market might not fit into any one of the above buckets (especially with the Fed now explicitly egging on the market). It also means that, according to the Bloomberg strategist, “history is of no guide as to what to expect next in our current situation. Though I suppose one thing is clear from the chart, especially since 2010 onward: The easy ride higher is over for the time being, and churning price action is likely in store for investors until the next direction (up or down) becomes clearer.

There is less confusion when looking at the next chart courtesy of the BearTrapsReport, which highlights the top 10 large net-decliner days when the S&P 500 still closed positive: “This shows that market leadership is not only fleeting, but the index is being completely carried by a few names. Historically this points to an imminent risk-off phase in the market.”

Some more detail on the worst A/D days when the S&P closed positive (chart above):

  • #1, or the worst day since 1995, was July 17th, 2015. The S&P peaked the day after before pulling back -12.5% into the Yuan devaluation.  
  • #2 was February 23rd, 2000, a month before the dot-com peak.
  • #3 was this Thursday.
  • #4 was May 11th, 2020, market pulled back -5% in the next 3 days.
  • #5 was March 17th, 2000, a week before dot-com peak.

What does the chart above mean:

This week we had 3 days where the S&P 500 closed positive and the advance-decline line was negative. Since 1995, there was only 1 other week where this occurred in June 1997. However, this week is not comparable in our view, as the negative a/d numbers were pretty close to zero (-6, -37, -35) that’s vs. (-161, -193, -61) this week. This week’s a/d numbers were very significant in terms of size relative to history. Since 1995 there has been 287 days when SPX closed positive and the a/d was negative. However, Thursday’s -193 was the 3rd lowest ever. Tuesday’s was #7 on the list.

In short, while on every previous occasion when stocks inched higher led by just a handful of stocks, the market tumbles shortly thereafter, what is especially notable is that the last time we had a cluster of such negative A/D days with the S&P closing at all time highs was just days before the dot-com bubble burst.

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At Least 13 Killed In Peru Nightclub Stampede Triggered By Police ‘Social Distancing’ Raid

At Least 13 Killed In Peru Nightclub Stampede Triggered By Police ‘Social Distancing’ Raid

Tyler Durden

Sun, 08/23/2020 – 10:10

In an example of COVID-19-related law enforcement gone horribly awry, 13 people were killed in a deadly stampede, as patrons tried to flee a surprise police raid on a crowded Lima, Peru nightclub on Saturday night.

At least 6 people were seriously injured, including 3 cops.

Orlando Velasco Mujica, general of the Peruvian National Police Police, told CNN that police were summoned to the Thomas Restobar in the Los Olivos district of Lima, Peru’s capital city, on Saturday evening. They were ordered to shut down an illegal party, where officials believed more than 120 people were in attendance.

Peru is struggling with one of Latin America’s deadliest and most devastating outbreaks. Strict docial distancing measures have been mandated nationwide, along with a 10 pm curfew in an effort to slow the virus’s spread.

Despite taking strict preventative measures early on, Peru has racked up more than 576,000 cases, and more than 27,000 deaths, according to JHU. The country has Latin America’s second-highest infection rate.

Peru ordered the closure of nightclubs and bars back in March, and banned extended family gatherings on Aug. 12.

According to an official statement delivered to CNN, the Ministry of the Interior reported that the police did not use “any type of weapon or tear gas to clear the premises.” When people began to flee the 2nd floor venue, they were crushed on the steep stairs.

Already, 23 people have been arrested, and officials are looking to hold the owners of the nightclub responsible.

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German Scientists Hold Live Concert For 2,000 People In Unusual Study Of How COVID-19 Spreads

German Scientists Hold Live Concert For 2,000 People In Unusual Study Of How COVID-19 Spreads

Tyler Durden

Sun, 08/23/2020 – 09:45

German researchers have packed some 2,000 people into an indoor “experimental concert” in order to learn more about how COVID-19 spreads at large, chaotic venues where normally health officials would be at a loss if they wanted to initiate contact tracing.

Held in the German city of Leipzig, participants enjoyed a live concert featuring German pop star Tim Bendzko, however, it was also a tightly control scientific experiment with each fan issued glowing hand sanitizer and electronic trackers. Attendees tended to be young and healthy, and had to show a negative COVID-19 test to be part of the experiment.

All were also wearing respiratory face masks and outfitted with “contract trackers” in order to record their contact rates and distances from other participants. 

It’s part of a number of experiments designed with the ultimate end-goal of avoiding another total societal and economic lockdown like occurred last Spring.

Scientists hope to better gauge risk when it comes to large public events, also in order to present health officials and politicians with more options in terms of keeping venues open, but with restrictive health measures to prevent super-spreader events.

CNN describes of the unprecedented live experiment

Using data from the contact trackers, scientists from The University of Halle will monitor the number “critical contacts” had by each participant during specific times and locations, while the residue left by fluorescent hand gel will identify frequently touched surfaces. Researchers hope to use the data to find ways to bring big events, including sports, back safely.

Dean of the University of Halle’s medical faculty Michael Gekle emphasized, “We cannot afford another lockdown,” according to CNN. “We have to gather the data now in order to be able to make valid predictions,” he added.

Leipzig concert, Getty Images

“There is no zero risk if you want to have life. We want to give the politicians a tool in order to decide rationally whether to allow such an event or not,” he described of the valuable data that hopes to be gained. “That means they have to have the tool to predict how many additional infected people such an event will produce,” he concluded.

The Leipzig concert was actually one of three scenarios as CNN describes:

Researchers directed volunteers to run three scenarios — one that simulated a concert pre-coronavirus, a second simulating a concert during the pandemic, with improved hygiene measures in place, and a third, with reduced participants. Scientists will gather the data, apply a mathematical model, and evaluate the hygiene interventions, with conclusions ready by the end of the year.

Such large-scale experiments could also given clearer direction to professional sports globally and in the US, where multi-billion dollar leagues have been put on hold for months, or are under threat of being canceled altogether.

Image via Tekdeeps

Meanwhile, the NBA is now conducting its own ‘live experiment’ of sorts by holding the rest of its season in an isolated ‘bubble’.

Players, staff, and officials are playing under complete quarantine, with no fans or outside visitors, at Disney World and will live at a group of hotels for months as the playoffs conclude.

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Tesla’s P/E Ratio Moves Past The Thousand Mark

Tesla’s P/E Ratio Moves Past The Thousand Mark

Tyler Durden

Sun, 08/23/2020 – 09:20

Authored by Bruce Wilds via Advancing Time blog,

Tesla’s valuation seems a bit over the moon considering on Friday it closed for the second time over $2,000. With the stock at a whopping P/E ratio of 1,066 times earnings, Tesla sports a market cap of over 373 billion dollars. Those of us without a great love for Tesla or Elon Musk see this as the poster child of absurdity. By comparison, Volkswagen, which sold over 10 million vehicles last year has a market cap of $82 billion and auto giant Toyota around $218 billion. Simply put, Tesla’s market cap has risen 244% this year while the market cap of the industry, excluding Tesla, is down 17%.

Only Thing Hotter Than The Car Is the Stock

In normal times Tesla would most likely be a company only visible in the rear-view mirror. The value of Tesla’s stock dramatically changed years ago following the report where it made its first quarterly profit, its market value soared to more than $10 billion. A large part of the increase in the stock price occurred because people that had short positions in the stock were squeezed into buying back their stock. This is something that has happened time and time again causing speculation that the company plays fast and loose with the numbers it reports.

Fast forward to today and we find that Tesla’s recent rally pushed its market value has made it by far the most valuable automaker in history. It is impossible to deny that Tesla’s stock has been on a hot streak, but not just lately, a year ago it traded for only $211 per share. The momentum has been infectious throughout the year and it took five trading sessions for Tesla stock to rally 40%. At Friday’s high of $2,081.68, Tesla stock was up more than 51% in the last eight trading sessions.

Part of the recent surge has been contributed to an announced a 5-for-1 stock split. Over the last three months, Tesla stock is up more than 150%. From the March lows, shares are up an astounding 493%. If that feels too cherry-picked, just realize that Tesla is up 390% year-to-date and more than 800% over the past 12 months. Part of the irony surrounding Tesla’s current high multiple market cap is that company could take or borrow five billion dollars to buy 100,000 of its own cars to destroy. This would increase sales sending profits and revenues even higher.

Tesla Has Been A Cash Burner!

With Tesla stock soaring to new highs it is again time to revisit the “Tesla – Musk” phenomenon. I have written several articles focused on this subject over the years and like many skeptics, I’m amazed at Elon Musk’s cat like ability to remain viable. Like a cat with nine lives, Musk is a high-flyer that continues to amaze those of us predicting his doom with his gift to avoid falling to the ground. After all his antics and misrepresentations I have to wonder why this clown is not in jail. The only answer I can reach is that somebody is keen on protecting the stock market from the shock of a Tesla meltdown.

Interestingly, in an interview from the World Economic Forum in Davos President Trump sang the praise of Musk calling him “one of our great geniuses” and urged that “we have to protect our genius.” This might help explain the settlement between Elon Musk and the SEC. It was seen by many investors as proof Washington remains a hotbed of cronyism and collusion. For all the turmoil and damage Musk spread upon investors rather than jail time or any meaningful punishment he received a slap on the wrist. Apparently protecting the exorbitant stock price of Tesla and those holding long positions took precedence over the law and justice. According to the posted settlement filings, Musk was to step down for 3 years as Chairman and pay a $20 million fine. Tesla was also to pay a $20 million fine. Following that Musk again started to bash and defy the SEC.

Revenue Has Not Kept Pace With Valuation

In the past, I likened Musk and Tesla to John Delorean and The DeLorean Motor Company that is remembered for its stainless steel DeLorean sports car featuring gull-wing doors. The company had a brief and turbulent history that ended in receivership and bankruptcy in 1982. Near the end, in a desperate attempt to raise the funds his company needed to survive, DeLorean got involved in drug trafficking but was acquitted of the charges brought against him because officials had overstepped the law.

For many investors, in the past, it was difficult to ignore that Tesla is billions of dollars in debt. Some of that debt has been rolled into creating new shares, which dilute the value of existing shares. Also, there was the issue of “corporate incest” and Tesla’s acquisition of ailing SolarCity in an all-stock $2.6 billion merger, this has turned out to be a bad deal. At the time Musk owned 22% of SolarCity which was founded by his cousins. The merger was promoted on the idea that Tesla’s mission since its inception was part of Elon Musk’s overall “Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan” to expedite the world’s transition to sustainable energy and away from a fossil fuel economy.

Tesla’s fortunes have moved in lockstep with a surging stock market. In an overview in early 2017, I wrote about how as I continued my research for the update my eyes began to glaze over at the magnitude of the subsidies that Musk had been granted. Government support is a theme of all his companies, and without it, none of them would exist. It also bolsters the argument that true price discovery is gone in our current stock market. Today several forces including stock buybacks and what has become known as the “Plunge Protection Team,” appear to jump in at any sign of a pullback. This destroys the proper pricing of assets which are the bedrock of free markets.

Key Is “Future” Tesla Demand

Many articles, such as the one appearing on Seeking Alpha, have pointed out Tesla’s success is not carved in stone and may depend on demand for its vehicles. Tesla is priced for breakneck growth but its product line-up and production capacity do not support this narrative.

With over 100 different electric cars expected to hit the markets by 2025, it is difficult for a realist to envision Tesla being able to remain viable unless its market share massively grows. As for new vehicles, Musk said there are  250,000 reservations for his ‘planned” new cybertruck but with only refundable $100 deposits true demand is questionable.

While Tesla sports a valuable advantage by being the first big player in the electric vehicle (EV) category it is not protected by a great number of patents. The big advantage of other manufacturers being slow to release EV cars is not expected to last. The technology is easy to replicate and most auto manufacturers have lines of EVs due out this year and next. Many of these cars will come at far cheaper prices and Tesla’s competitors will offer their customers service shops and trade-ins. This means Tesla’s first-mover advantage may quickly slip away.

Another interesting development missed by many Tesla enthusiasts is that an electric car-sharing service that debuted in Indianapolis in 2015 has pulled the plug on its network of rechargeable cars after residents failed to embrace the vehicles. Blue Indy ended its collaboration with the city of Indianapolis on May 21st, saying in a statement that the car-sharing service “did not reach the level of activity required to be economically viable.”

Even as Tesla’s saga has become both a phenomenon and a conundrum, it is almost impossible for many investors to see the path forward for Tesla as guaranteed. It may speak volumes that during a recent twenty-five hundred mile round trip from the Midwest to Florida I saw only one Tesla. Since returning home I have seen only one other, this underlines Tesla has a very small footprint. This is why so many investors remain appalled at Tesla’s valuation and continue to stand by their claims it is destined to fail.

Musk should be on top of the world after forcing shorts to capitulate but it seems his ego never rests. An example of this is how Musk tweeted his Boring Company would complete a commercial tunnel in Las Vegas and it would be fully operational in 2020. Critics have pointed out that Boring has not proved its technology and talent can scale to municipality size projects. The Boring’s tunnel projects have been debunked by PhDs and ridiculed by government officials. Ph.D. chemist and video blogger Phil Mason recently said. “There’s no revolution here. Let’s be honest here: he’s driving a car through a sewer pipe.”

As to where Tesla’s stock price is going, predictions are all over the board. Ark Invest chief Catherine Wood told CNBC that she sees Tesla shares hitting $6,000 within the next five years. Others of us continue to agree with David Stockman. He wrote in May of 2015, in an honest free market, Tesla would have long ago been carted off to the chapter 11 junk shredder. Even consumer advocate and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader issued a stark warning that things were overdone, he said, “When the stock market bubble implodes, it will have been started by the surge in Tesla shares beyond speculative zeal.

Where this stock is going is a matter of opinion, some investors argue Tesla should be viewed as a tech stock rather than the maker of electric vehicles and a car company. Also, few people view Tesla’s investment in China as risky and that the new Shanghai plant, as well as Model Y production, could pressure profit margins in 2020. Instead, they choose to focus on Tesla as the tip of the arrow in the attack on climate change. The flip-side of this argument is that electric vehicles are not as environmentally friendly as portrayed.

For more on how this all started see here…

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Ireland’s “#Golfgate” Scandal Threatens To Throw Government Into Chaos As Officials Resign

Ireland’s “#Golfgate” Scandal Threatens To Throw Government Into Chaos As Officials Resign

Tyler Durden

Sun, 08/23/2020 – 08:45

Ireland, like the UK, has become a bastion of coronavirus hysteria, as local officials have adopted strictly enforced rules and mask mandates as new cases terrified the public.

A few minutes ago, the ROI’s Department of Health reported another 2 deaths and 156 new cases.

Like other EU members, Ireland’s strict response to the virus suppressed cases quickly after an initial outbreak, but as life begins the steady return to normal, cases have bounced back slightly, reviving the public’s fervent support for the rules, and their fury with anybody – particularly those in positions of power – who flouts what is widely seen as a patriotic duty, although it probably wasn’t masks alone that helped Ireland overcome the first wave.

In keeping with that spirit, a major political scandal in Ireland erupted this week when the country’s top government officials was outed for attending a formal dinner where social distancing rules – including mask wearing and restrictions on crowd sizes – weren’t enforced.

But the issue continues to escalate. Ireland’s national police force confirmed Friday night that it was “investigating an event” held in the city of Galway on Wednesday evening that may have breached coronavirus-related health laws – an obvious reference to the parliamentary Oireachtas Golf Society dinner which was held at a hotel in Galway.

Minister for Agriculture Dara Calleary – who was in his job barely a month – has resigned, as has the vice chair of Ireland’s upper house, Jerry Buttimer.

The day before the dinner, the government ratcheted up the restrictions on indoor gatherings to just six people, while Weddings and some cultural events, including plays and concerts, could be attended by up to 50 people. The rules created some confusion, but there was little doubt that the Oireachtas Golf Society dinner was in poor taste.

Per local media reports, the event space originally included a partition to separate the group and keep numbers in each section to below 50, but they were apparently removed for the speeches at the event, resulting in the rules being broken. 81 people reporteldy attended the dinner.

Dara Calleary has resigned as agriculture minister after only a month in the job

On Twitter, Irish are griping about the scandal under the hashtag ‘#golfgate’.

Other government officials reportedly attended the dinner.

Calleary resigned on Friday after apologizing in a series of tweets where he expressed “sincere regret” to his government colleagues. “In light of the updated public health guidance this week I should not have attended the event. I wish to apologize unreservedly to everyone,” he wrote.

Buttimer shared on Twitter a letter sent to the chief of parliament’s upper house saying his attendance “had compromised the government at a time when people, across every sector of Irish society are doing their best to keep all safe during this global pandemic.” He called the decision an “unintended but serious lapse in judgement,” Buttimer said. He “should not have attended the dinner” he said, and would resign immediately.

The scandal could have implications beyond Ireland, as the Irish opposition is now gunning for EU trade commissioner Phil Hogan, who once held the position that Calleary just vacated. Given the importance of trade among the myriad issues facing the EU, Hogan is considered a key member of the Commission, which is led by President Ursula von der Leyen.

Hogan has so far refused to apologize for attending the Wednesday night dinner, and has instead insisted in a statement that he only attended after being assured that guidelines and rules would all be followed.

All told, dozens of figures in the Irish political scene attended the event, which was organized by a golf society in the Irish parliament. Other notable attendees included Séamus Woulfe, a recently appointed Supreme Court judge who was AG in the last government.

If anything, it’s merely a sign of how confusing and uncertain all these rules are to follow. But the media, egged on by sanctimonious readers, seems ever-ready to pillory politicians and other people in power hoisted on their own petard.

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Erdoğan Needs New Enemies

Erdoğan Needs New Enemies

Tyler Durden

Sun, 08/23/2020 – 08:10

Authored by Burak Bekdil via The Gatestone Institute,

Fearing a sharp decline in his approval rating, especially in view of a looming economic crisis, Turkey’s Islamist strongman, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, appears to be chasing new wars with real or imaginary enemies.

Election data and research show that Turks have a tendency to unite behind their leader in times of crises or confrontation with foreign enemies. According to the Turkish pollster Metropoll, for example, Erdoğan’s approval rating peaked to 71.1% in December 2013, when he portrayed a slew of corruption allegations about him and his family as “a coup attempt.” In parliamentary elections in 2015, Erdoğan’s nationwide vote fell to 37.5% and his Justice and Development Party lost its parliamentary majority for the first time since it came to power in 2002.

Erdoğan’s approval rating rose sharply again to 67.6% after a failed putsch against his government in July 2016. At the height of the COVID-19 crisis his rating was a strong 55.8%. Metropoll said Erdoğan’s current approval rating is at 50.6%. He thinks he needs new tensions with Turkey’s past and present-day adversaries.

Most recently, condemning the historic normalization deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Erdoğan said that “because we stand by Palestine,” he is considering withdrawing Turkey’s ambassador from the UAE. “I gave instructions to my foreign minister… We may suspend diplomatic relations [with the UAE] or recall our ambassador to Abu Dhabi,” Erdoğan added.

If he does so, Turkey will be the only country in the region that has no diplomatic relations with Armenia and Cyprus, and no ambassadorial-level relations with Syria, Israel, Egypt and the UAE. Turkey’s relations with many countries where it has full diplomatic ties are not in much better shape.

In late July, even before the UAE-Israel deal, Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar told Al Jazeera that Turkey would hold Abu Dhabi, the leading emirate, accountable at the right time and place for “malicious actions committed in Libya and Syria.” He said that the UAE is “a functional country that serves others politically or militarily and is used remotely.”

Turkey evidently has deep ire for any deal that may help stabilize one of the world’s most volatile regions. On August 3, the Turkish Foreign Ministry condemned an oil agreement concluded between a US-based company and Syrian Kurds for the development of oil fields in northeastern Syria. In northwestern Syria, where Turkey controls small pockets of land, Ankara threatened to respond militarily to potential attacks on its forces.

There are “hotter” disputes, as well. Ignoring international efforts to find a diplomatic solution to maritime border disputes with its traditional Aegean rival, Greece, on August 10, Turkey resumed oil and gas exploration in the Mediterranean Sea — only days after Turkey’s government said it would delay offshore surveys to seek a diplomatic resolution with Greece.

French President Emmanuel Macron called for Turkey to be sanctioned and accused its government of violating the rights of Greece and Cyprus. In the face of increasing Turkish assertiveness, Macron also ordered the French Navy to the Eastern Mediterranean to provide military assistance to Greece. In a further move, France signed a defense deal with Cyprus. The agreement came into effect on August 1. The two-year Defense Cooperation Agreement covers energy, crisis management, counter-terrorism and maritime security cooperation between Cyprus and France.

While the standoff was deepening, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis convened his national security council. A statement issued after the meetings was reminiscent of pre-war times: “We are in complete political and operational readiness,” Minister of State George Gerapetritis said on state television channel ERT. “Most of the fleet is ready to be deployed wherever necessary.”

If you add to that perilous picture the Cypriot, Israeli and Egyptian navies, Turkey is up against formidable naval forces in the Mediterranean. In one dangerous incident on August 14, two warships, the Greek Navy’s Limnos frigate and Turkey’s TCG Kemalreis, collided in the Eastern Mediterranean.

All those Turkish-Greek tensions in the Aegean and Mediterranean seas bolster a century-long Turkish nostalgia to take back some of the Greek islands. Yeni Safak, a fiercely pro-Erdoğan newspaper, suggested that the Turkish military should invade 16 Greek islands.

The website Greek City Times commented:

“Discussion of wars and invading Greek islands is… a tactic used by the regime of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to distract the Turkish population from the woeful economic situation,”

Erdoğan’s idea of vote-hunting by regional troublemaking is not limited to naval adventures only. Against the background of a sudden border flare-up between Azerbaijan and Armenia on July 12, the Turkish and Azeri militaries launched a two-week long joint military exercise, involving the traditional allies’ air and ground forces.

In Turkey’s southeast, Iraq blamed Ankara for a drone attack that killed two high-ranking Iraqi military officers. The incident occurred shortly before a planned visit by Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar to Baghdad. A fuming Iraqi government said the Turkish minister was no longer welcome.

Erdoğan needs epic stories of military might against real or fabricated foreign enemies to tell an increasing number of grudging voters in the face of an ailing economy. That is bad news for the entire region.

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Advisor To British Government Warns Coronavirus “Might Be With Us Forever”

Advisor To British Government Warns Coronavirus “Might Be With Us Forever”

Tyler Durden

Sun, 08/23/2020 – 07:35

A British academic and advisor to HMG warned Saturday during an interview that the coronavirus might be with us “forever” even if a vaccine is quickly developed.

“This is not going to be a disease like Smallpox, which could be eradicated by vaccination. This is a virus that is going to be with us forever in some form or another,” said Professor Mark Walport.

Pressed on whether he agrees with projections from WHO Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who said Friday that he hoped the pandemic would be over in under two years, but that the possibility of a more sustained outbreak is something that can’t yet be readily dismissed, Walport claimed that tackling the virus will depend on a successful vaccine, but that mass production of a workable vaccine won’t be the last step toward fighting the virus.

“I am reasonably optimistic that it will be possible to make such a vaccine – there are a large number in development, including two that are in advanced stages from the UK,” Walport said.

However, even once a vaccine is in hand, Walport said caution might still be needed since it’s unclear whether a vaccine will offer lasting protection.

“[It] almost certainly will require repeated vaccinations so, a bit like flu, people will need re-vaccination at regular intervals,” he said.

The government adviser also cautioned that the percentage of new cases in the UK is rising in some parts of the country (though, to be sure, partial lockdowns and other measures have been implemented to blunt these outbreaks).

People shouldn’t get complacent just yet: there’s still a chance that the UK outbreak could spin out of control once again.

“Is there a situation where it could get out of control? Well, obviously, that is possible and that is why it is so important that we all work together,” Walport said.

“This infection is with us. We know that less than one in five people around the country have been infected, so 80% of the population are still susceptible to the virus.”

The UK was brutalized by one of the highest death totals in Europe, and one of the highest mortality rates globally as well, something that has horrifying and mystified government scientists in equal measure.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2QkcLWW Tyler Durden

Are You Ready For The “No One Could Have Known” Routine?

Are You Ready For The “No One Could Have Known” Routine?

Tyler Durden

Sun, 08/23/2020 – 07:00

Authored by Thomas Harrington via Off-Guardian.org,

Ready for another rendition of the “no one could have known” routine made famous by all the self-proclaimed liberals who shamelessly went along with the Neo-Cons planned and lie-supported destruction of the Middle East nearly two decades ago?

As in “no one could have known” that by shutting down life as we know it to focus obsessively on a virus mostly affecting what is still a relatively small number of people at the end of their lives (yes, oh squeamish ones we must summon the courage to talk about Quality Adjusted Life Years when making public policy) we probably would:

1. Cause economic devastation and hence excess deaths, suicides, divorces depressions in much larger numbers than those killed by the virus.

2. Provide an already monopolistic and predatory online retailing establishment with competitive advantages in terms of capital reserves and market share that will make it virtually impossible at any time in the near or medium future for the country’s and the world’s small and even medium-sized businesses to ever catch up to them. And that this will plunge huge sectors of the world-wide economy into serf-like ruin, with all that this portends in terms of additional death and human suffering.

3. Cause greatly increased misery and countless additional deaths in the so-called Global South where many people, rightly or wrongly, depend on the consumption patterns of us relatively fortunate sit-at-homers to make it through the week.

4. Destroy much of what was attractive about urban life as we know it and lead to a real estate collapse of extraordinary proportions, turning even our few remaining showplace cities into crime-ridden reserves of ever more desperate people.

5. Force state and local governments, already struggling before the crisis, and unable to print at money at will like the Feds, to cut their already insufficient budgets at a time when their broke and stressed constituents need those services more than ever.

6. Push “smart” monitoring of our lives, already intolerable for anyone still clinging to memories of freedom in the pre-September 11th world, to the point where most people will no longer understand what people used to know as privacy, intimacy or the simple dignity of being left alone.

7. Train of a generation of children to be fearful and distrustful of others from day one, and to view bending to diktats “to keep them safe”, (no matter how empirically dubious the actual threat to them might be), rather than the courageous pursuit of joy and human fullness, as the key goal in life.

We will also no doubt be told that no one could have imagined or known at the time:

That governments often make policy on the basis of information they know to be largely unsubstantiated or flat-out false. Because they know (Karl Rove spilled the beans in his famous interview with Ron Susskind) that by the time the few conscientious researchers out there get around looking past the hype to debunk their initial storylines, the structures favorable to them put into place on the basis of the false narrative will have been normalized, and thus be in no danger of being dismantled.

That our educational institutions, already failing miserably in the essential democratic task of educating the young to engage in productive conflict with those whose ideas are different than their own, will only further promote dehumanization of “the other” through ever-greater reliance on the disembodied practices of remote learning. And that this, in turn, will only encourage the further growth of the “drive-by shooting” approach to “coping” with new and challenging ideas seen so often in our public “discussions” in recent years.

That further fomenting the alienated and alienating educational practices mentioned above will make than it easier than it already is for our oligarchs to enhance their already obscene levels control over our daily lives and long-term destinies through divide and rule tactics.

That according to the Institute for Democracy and Election Assistance (IDEA) fully twos thirds of elections scheduled to be held since February have been postponed due to COVID. And that this does much to accustom citizens and populations to the idea that one of their few remaining democratic rights can essentially be taken away on the basis of bureaucratic whims, creating a dangerous “new normal” that obviously favors the interests of established centers of power.

That Sweden and other countries developed much more proportionate, culture-saving and dignity-saving ways to live safely and much more fully with the virus.

That Anthony Fauci has a well-documented tendency to see every health problem as being amenable to expensive pharmaceutical solutions (some might even call it corruption), even when other less intrusive, less expensive, and equally effective therapies are available.

That the recent history of using vaccines to fight respiratory infections has been ineffective when not grotesquely counterproductive.

That during the first half of the 20th century the infectious disease of polio was a constant danger, culminating in 1952 with a devastating toll of 3,145 deaths and 21,269 cases of paralysis in a US population of 162,000,000, almost all of the victims being children and young adults. The danger then to the under-24 population (some 34 million) of being infected (.169%) paralyzed (.044%) or killed (.0092%) far outstripped in percentages and, obviously, severity anything COVID is doing to the same age group. And yet there was no talk of blanket school closures, cancelled high school, college and pro sports or, needless to say, lockdowns or masking for the entire society.

That the world lost some 1.1 million people in the 1957-58 Asian flu epidemic (more than the present COVID number of 760,000), with some 116,000 in the US (.064% of the population) and the world similarly did not stop.

That the Hong Kong flu of 1968-69 killed between 1 and 4 million worldwide and some 100,000 in the US (.048% of population killed) and that life similarly was not stopped. Indeed, Woodstock took place in the middle of it.

That the decisions to get on with life in all of these cases were probably not the result, as some today might be tempted suggest, of a lack of scientific knowledge or lesser concern for the value of life, but rather a keener understanding in the more historically-minded heads of that time that risk is always part of life and that aggressive attempts to eliminate this most ubiquitous human reality can often lead to severe unwanted consequences.

That there were many prestigious scientists, including Nobel prize winners, who told us as early as March that this virus, while new, would in greater or lesser measure behave much like all viruses before it and fade away. And, therefore, the best way to deal with it was to let it run its course while protecting the most vulnerable people in society and letting everyone else live their lives.

That significant information platforms banned or sidelined the views of these high-prestige scientists, while aggressively circulating the words of jokers like Neil Ferguson at Imperial College, whose stupid and alarmist predictions of COVID mortality (the latest in a career full of stupid and alarmist, but not coincidentally, pharmaceutical-industry-friendly predictions), gave politicians the pretext for setting in motion perhaps the most aggressive experiment in social engineering in the history of the world.

That just as the levels of mortality from the virus were diminishing rapidly in the late spring and early summer of 2020, thus raising hope for a much-needed return to normality, there was seamless bait and switch in the major media from a discourse centering on the logical and laudable goal of “flattening the curve” to one centered on the absurdly utopian (and not coincidentally vaccine-oriented) goal of eliminating new “cases”.

That having the news media focus narrowly and obsessively on the growth of “cases” when 99%+ of them are completely non-life-threatening was journalistic malpractice of the highest order, comparable to, if not exceeding in its sinister effect that which was generated by the media’s wholly unsubstantiated talk of mushroom clouds and WMD two decades ago, talk that led (so sorry brown people) to the deaths of millions and the destruction of entire civilizations in the Middle East.

That government and corporate power holders, having successfully habituated people to engage in major solidarity-destroying social changes through the repetition of the largely meaningless term “case“, will surely come to rely on it and other breathlessly repeated, albeit largely empty, signifiers to paralyze society at will, especially at those times when the people appear to be waking up and coming together to demand a change In the existing balance of social power.

That as numerous existing and emerging studies seem to demonstrate, hydroxychloroquine is, when combined with other similarly affordable drugs, a safe and rather effective early-stage treatment for COVID 19.

That the negative studies on hydroxychloroquine effectiveness published at two of the most prestigious medical journals in the world The Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine, and which were adduced time and again at a key moment in the early debate of possible COVID treatments to debunk the drug’s effectiveness, were found to be based on forged data sets. (see earlier entry on how power centers play the game of perception lag with false information to achieve long-term structural changes)

That suggesting world-class professional athletes in their 20s and 30s, or even their less talented and less fit high school and college counterparts, were running a risk of mortal consequences in even minimal numbers by playing in the midst of the COVID spread was, in light of known age-related numbers on the disease’s lethality, at best ridiculous and, at worst, a very cynical fear-mongering ploy.

Repeat after me, “no one could have possibly known these things” and then check your screen to see, as citizens of Oceania, whether you are supposed to be worried this week about the threat from Eurasia or Eastasia.

And, of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t remind you to mask up real tight, especially in light of the CDC numbers — you’ll have to forgive here for breaking with the rich tradition of pure panic-driven narrative and moving to the realm of empirical figures — which tell us that up until this point in our “everything must change” crisis:

  • 0.011% of the US population under 65 have died of COVID

  • 0.005% of the US population under 55 have died of COVID

  • 0.0009% of the US population under 35 have died of COVID

  • 0.0002% of the US population under 25 have died of COVID

  • 0.00008% of the US population under 15 have died of COVID

And as for the most “high risk” people?

  • 0.23% of the US population over 65 have died of COVID

Though they’ve tried to sell it otherwise, this thing has very little, if anything, to do with great-grandma’s Spanish flu of 1918.

Indeed, it not even completely clear if it is cumulatively worse in terms of loss of life than the influenzas outbreaks of 1957-58 or 1968-69 that most everyone slept through. But, I guess that doesn’t matter when there’s a narrative to keep.

Might it be time to ask if there might be something else afoot with all this?

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2EipmY9 Tyler Durden

Catapulting Russian-Meddling Propaganda

Catapulting Russian-Meddling Propaganda

Tyler Durden

Sat, 08/22/2020 – 23:20

Authored by Ray McGovern via ConsortiumNews.com,

The New York Times is leading the full-court press to improve on what it regards as Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s weak-kneed effort to blame the Russians for giving us Donald Trump…

The fresh orgy of anti-Russian invective in the lickspittle media (LSM) has the feel of fin de siècle. The last four reality-impaired years do seem as though they add up to a century. And no definitive fin is in sight, as long as most people don’t know what’s going on.

The LSM should be confronted: “At long last have you left no sense of decency?” But who would hear the question — much less any answer? The corporate media have a lock on what Americans are permitted or not permitted to hear. Checking the truth, once routine in journalism, is a thing of the past.

Thus the reckless abandon with which The New York Times is leading the current full-court press to improve on what it regards as Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s weak-kneed effort to blame the Russians for giving us Donald Trump. The press is on, and there are no referees to call the fouls.

The recent release of a 1,000-page, sans bombshells and already out-of-date report by the Senate Intelligence Committee has provided the occasion to “catapult the propaganda,” as President George W. Bush once put it.

As the the Times‘s Mark Mazzetti put it in his article Wednesday:

“Releasing the report less than 100 days before Election Day, Republican-majority senators hoped it would refocus attention on the interference by Russia and other hostile foreign powers in the American political process, which has continued unabated.”

Mazzetti is telling his readers, soto voce: regarding that interference four years ago, and the “continued-unabated” part, you just have to trust us and our intelligence community sources who would never lie to you. And if, nevertheless, you persist in asking for actual evidence, you are clearly in Putin’s pocket.

Incidentally, Mueller’s report apparently was insufficient, only two years in the making, and just 448 pages. The Senate committee’s magnum opus took three years, is almost 1,000 pages — and fortified. So there.

Iron Pills

Recall how disappointed the LSM and the rest of the Establishment were with Mueller’s anemic findings in spring 2019. His report claimed that the Russian government “interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion” via a social media campaign run by the Internet Research Agency (IRA) and by “hacking” Democratic emails. But the evidence behind those charges could not bear close scrutiny.

You would hardly know it from the LSM, but the accusation against the IRA was thrown out of court when the U.S. government admitted it could not prove that the IRA was working for the Russian government. Mueller’s ipse dixit did not suffice, as we explained a year ago in “Sic Transit Gloria Mueller.”

The Best Defense …

… is a good offense, and the Senate Intelligence Committee’s release of its study — call it “Mueller (Enhanced)” — and the propaganda fanfare — come at a key point in the Russiagate/Spygate imbroglio. It also came, curiously, as the Democratic Convention was beginning, as if the Republican-controlled Senate was sending Trump a message.

Durham

One chief worry, of course, derives from the uncertainty as to whether John Durham, the US Attorney investigating those FBI and other officials who launched the Trump-Russia investigation will let some heavy shoes drop before the election. Barr has said he expects “developments in Durham’s investigation hopefully before the end of the summer.”

FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith already has decided to plead guilty to the felony of falsifying evidence used to support a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to surveillance to spy on Trump associate Carter Page. It is abundantly clear that Clinesmith was just a small cog in the deep-state machine in action against candidate and then President Trump. And those running the machine are well known. The president has named names, and Barr has made no bones about his disdain for what he calls spying on the president.

The cognoscenti and the big fish themselves may be guessing that Trump/Barr/Durham will not throw out heavier lines for former FBI Director James Comey, his deputy Andrew McCabe, CIA Director John Brennan, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, for example. But how can they be sure? What has become clear is that the certainty they all shared that Hillary Clinton would be the next president prompted them not only to take serious liberties with the Constitution and the law, but also to do so without taking rudimentary steps to hide their tracks.

The incriminating evidence is there. And as Trump becomes more and more vulnerable and defensive about his ineptness — particularly with regard to Covid-19 — he may summon the courage to order Barr and Durham to hook the big fish, not just minnows like Clinesmith. The neuralgic reality is that no one knows at this point how far Trump will go. To say that this kind of uncertainty is unsettling to all concerned is to say the obvious.

So, the stakes are high — for the Democrats, as well — and, not least, the LSM. In these circumstances it would seem imperative not just to circle the wagons but to mount the best offense/defense possible, despite the fact that virtually all the ammunition (as in the Senate report) is familiar and stale (“enhanced” or not).

Black eyes might well be in store for the very top former law enforcement and intelligence officials, the Democrats, and the LSM — and in the key pre-election period. So, the calculation: launch “Mueller Report (Enhanced)” and catapult the truth now with propaganda, before it is too late.

No Evidence of Hacking

The “hacking of the DNC” charge suffered a fatal blow three months ago when it became known that Shawn Henry, president of the DNC-hired cyber-security firm CrowdStrike, admitted under oath that his firm had no evidence that the DNC emails were hacked — by Russia or anyone else.

(YouTube)

Henry gave his testimony on Dec. 5, 2017, but House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff was able to keep it hidden until May 7, 2020.

Here’s a brief taste of how Henry’s testimony went: Asked by Schiff for “the date on which the Russians exfiltrated the data”, Henry replied, “We just don’t have the evidence that says it actually left.”

You did not know that? You may be forgiven — up until now — if your information diet is limited to the LSM and you believe The New York Times still publishes “all the news that’s fit to print.”  I am taking bets on how much longer the NYT will be able to keep Henry’s testimony hidden; Schiff’s record of 29 months will be hard to beat.

Putting Lipstick on the Pig of Russian ‘Tampering’

Worse still for the LSM and other Russiagate diehards, Mueller’s findings last year enabled Trump to shout “No Collusion” with Russia. What seems clear at this point is that a key objective of the current catapulting of the truth is to apply lipstick to Mueller’s findings.

After all, he was supposed to find treacherous plotting between the Trump campaign and the Russians and failed miserably. Most LSM-suffused Americans remain blissfully unaware of this, and the likes of Pulitzer Prize winner Mazzetti have been commissioned to keep it that way.

In Wednesday’s article, for example, Mazzetti puts it somewhat plaintively:

“Like the special counsel … the Senate report did not conclude that the Trump campaign engaged in a coordinated conspiracy with the Russian government — a fact that the Republicans seized on to argue that there was ‘no collusion’.”

How could they!

Mazzetti is playing with words. “Collusion,” however one defines it, is not a crime; conspiracy is.

‘Breathtaking’ Contacts: Mueller (Enhanced)

Mark Mazzetti (YouTube)

Mazzetti emphasizes that the Senate report “showed extensive evidence of contacts between Trump campaign advisers and people tied to the Kremlin,” and Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), the intelligence committee’s vice chairman, said the committee report details “a breathtaking level of contacts between Trump officials and Russian government operatives that is a very real counterintelligence threat to our elections.”

None of that takes us much beyond the Mueller report and other things generally well known — even in the LSM. Nor does the drivel about people like Paul Manafort “sharing polling data with Russians” who might be intelligence officers. That data was “mostly public” the Times itself reported, and the paper had to correct a story that the data was intended for Russian oligarchs, when it was meant for Ukrainian oligarchs instead. That Manafort was working to turn Ukraine towards the West and not Russia is rarely mentioned.

Recent revelations regarding the false data given the FISA court by an FBI lawyer to “justify” eavesdropping on Trump associate Carter Page show the Senate report to be not up to date and misguided in endorsing the FBI’s decision to investigate Page. The committee may wish to revisit that endorsement — at least.

On the Steele Dossier, the committee also missed a ruling by a British judge against Christopher Steele, labeling his dossier an attempt to help Hillary Clinton get elected. Consortium News explained back in October 2017 that both CrowdStrike and Steele were paid for by the Democratic Party and Clinton campaign to push Russiagate.

Also missed by the intelligence committee was a document released by the Senate Judiciary Committee last month that revealed that Steele’s “Primary Subsource and his friends peddled warmed-over rumors and laughable gossip that Steele dressed up as formal intelligence memos.”

Smearing WikiLeaks

The Intelligence Committee report also repeats thoroughly debunked myths about WikiLeaks and, like Mueller, the committee made no effort to interview Julian Assange before launching its smears. Italian journalist Stefania Maurizi, who partnered with WikiLeaks in the publication of the Podesta emails, described the report’s treatment of WikiLeaks in this Twitter thread:

2. the description of #WikiLeaks‘ publishing activities by this #SenateIntelligenceCommittee‘s Report appears a true #EdgarHoover‘s disinformation campaign to make a legitimate media org completely radioactive

3. Clearly, to describe #WikiLeaks and its publishing activities the #SenateIntelligenceCommittee’s Report completely rely on #US intelligence community+ #MikePompeo’s characterisation of #WikiLeaks. There is not even any pretense of an independent approach

4. there are also unsubstantiated claims like:
– “[WikiLeaks’] disclosures have jeopardized the safety of individual Americans and foreign allies” (p.200)
– “WikiLeaks has passed information to U.S. adversaries” (p.201)

5. it’s completely false that “#WikiLeaks does not seem to weigh whether its disclosures add any public interest value” (p.200) and any longtime media partner like me could provide you dozens of examples on how wrong this characterisation [is].

Titillating

Mazzetti did add some spice to the version of his article that dominated the two top right columns of Wednesday’s Times with the blaring headline: “Senate Panel Ties Russian Officials to Trump’s Aides: G.O.P.-Led Committee Echoes Mueller’s Findings on Election Tampering.”

Those who make it to the end of Mazzetti’s piece will learn that the Senate committee report “did not establish” that the Russian government obtained any compromising material on Mr. Trump or that they tried to use such materials [that they didn’t have] as leverage against him.” However, Mazzetti adds,

“According to the report, Mr. Trump met a former Miss Moscow at a party during one trip in 1996. After the party, a Trump associate told others he had seen Mr. Trump with the woman on multiple occasions and that they ‘might have had a brief romantic relationship.’

“The report also raised the possibility that, during that trip, Mr. Trump spent the night with two young women who joined him the next morning at a business meeting with the mayor of Moscow.”

This is journalism?

Another Pulitzer in Store?

The Times appends a note reminding us that Mazzetti was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on Donald Trump’s advisers and their connections to Russia.

And that’s not the half of it. In September 2018, Mazzetti and his NYT colleague Scott Shane wrote a 10,000-word feature, “The Plot to Subvert an Election,” trying to convince readers that the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) had successfully swayed U.S. opinion during the 2016 election with 80,000 Facebook posts that they said had reached 126 million Americans.

That turned out to be a grotesquely deceptive claim. Mazzetti and Shane failed to mention the fact that those 80,000 IRA posts (from early 2015 through 2017, meaning about half came after the election), had been engulfed in a vast ocean of more than 33 trillion Facebook posts in people’s news feeds – 413 million times more than the IRA posts. Not to mention the lack of evidence that the IRA was the Russian government, as Mueller claimed.

In exposing that chicanery, prize-winning investigative reporter Gareth Porter commented:

“The descent of The New York Times into this unprecedented level of propagandizing for the narrative of Russia’s threat to U.S. democracy is dramatic evidence of a broader problem of abuses by corporate media … Greater awareness of the dishonesty at the heart of the Times’ coverage of that issue is a key to leveraging media reform and political change.”

Nothingburgers With Russian Dressing: the Backstory

The late Robert Parry.

“It’s too much; it’s just too much, too much”, a sedated, semi-conscious Robert Parry kept telling me from his hospital bed in late January 2018 a couple of days before he died. Bob was founder of Consortium News.

It was already clear what Bob meant; he had taken care to see to that. On Dec. 31, 2017 the reason for saying that came in what he titled “An Apology & Explanation” for “spotty production in recent days.” A stroke on Christmas Eve had left Bob with impaired vision, but he was able to summon enough strength to write an Apologia — his vision for honest journalism and his dismay at what had happened to his profession before he died on Jan. 27, 2018. The dichotomy was “just too much”.

Parry rued the role that journalism was playing in the “unrelenting ugliness that has become Official Washington. … Facts and logic no longer mattered. It was a case of using whatever you had to diminish and destroy your opponent … this loss of objective standards reached deeply into the most prestigious halls of American media.”

What bothered Bob most was the needless, dishonest tweaking of the Russian bear. “The U.S. media’s approach to Russia,” he wrote, “is now virtually 100 percent propaganda. Does any sentient human being read The New York Times’ or The Washington Post’s coverage of Russia and think that he or she is getting a neutral or unbiased treatment of the facts? … Western journalists now apparently see it as their patriotic duty to hide facts that otherwise would undermine the demonizing of Putin and Russia.”

Parry, who was no conservative, continued:

“Liberals are embracing every negative claim about Russia just because elements of the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency produced a report last Jan. 6 that blamed Russia for ‘hacking’ Democratic emails and releasing them to WikiLeaks.”

Bob noted that the ‘hand-picked’ authors “evinced no evidence and even admitted that they weren’t asserting any of this as fact.”

It was just too much.

Robert Parry’s Last Article

Peter Strzok during congressional hearing in July 2018. (Wikimedia Commons)

Bob posted his last substantive article on Dec. 13, 2017, the day after text exchanges between senior FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were made public. (Typically, readers of The New York Times the following day would altogether miss the importance of the text-exchanges.)

Bob Parry rarely felt any need for a “sanity check.” Dec. 12, 2017 was an exception. He called me about the Strzok-Page texts; we agreed they were explosive. FBI Agent Peter Strzok was on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s staff investigating alleged Russian interference, until Mueller removed him.

Strzok reportedly was a “hand-picked” FBI agent taking part in the Jan 2017 evidence-impoverished, rump, misnomered “intelligence community” assessment that blamed Russia for hacking and other election meddling. And he had helped lead the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s misuse of her computer servers. Page was Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s right-hand lawyer.

His Dec. 13, 2017 piece would be his fourth related article in less than two weeks; it turned out to be his last substantive article.  All three of the earlier ones are worth a re-read as examples of fearless, unbiased, perceptive journalism. Here are the links.

Bob began his article on the Strzok-Page bombshell:

“The disclosure of fiercely anti-Trump text messages between two romantically involved senior FBI officials who played key roles in the early Russia-gate inquiry has turned the supposed Russian-election-meddling “scandal” into its own scandal, by providing evidence that some government investigators saw it as their duty to block or destroy Donald Trump’s presidency.?

“As much as the U.S. mainstream media has mocked the idea that an American ‘deep state’ exists and that it has maneuvered to remove Trump from office, the text messages between senior FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok and senior FBI lawyer Lisa Page reveal how two high-ranking members of the government’s intelligence/legal bureaucracy saw their role as protecting the United States from an election that might elevate to the presidency someone as unfit as Trump.”

Not a fragment of Bob’s or other Consortium News analysis made any impact on what Bob used to call the Establishment media. As a matter of fact, eight months later during a talk in Seattle that I titled “Russia-gate: Can You Handle the Truth?”, only three out of a very progressive audience of some 150 had ever heard of Strzok and Page.

And so it goes.

Lest I am accused of being “in Putin’s pocket,” let me add the explanatory note that we Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity included in our most explosive Memorandum for President Trump, on “Russian hacking.”

Full Disclosure: Over recent decades the ethos of our intelligence profession has eroded in the public mind to the point that agenda-free analysis is deemed well nigh impossible. Thus, we add this disclaimer, which applies to everything we in VIPS say and do: We have no political agenda; our sole purpose is to spread truth around and, when necessary, hold to account our former intelligence colleagues.

We speak and write without fear or favor. Consequently, any resemblance between what we say and what presidents, politicians and pundits say is purely coincidental. The fact we find it is necessary to include that reminder speaks volumes about these highly politicized times.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3hmZZTk Tyler Durden

China Warns ‘Necessary Countermeasures’ Coming For Any Asian Country Willing To Host US Missiles

China Warns ‘Necessary Countermeasures’ Coming For Any Asian Country Willing To Host US Missiles

Tyler Durden

Sat, 08/22/2020 – 22:55

It was a year ago that the Pentagon first announced it would move forward with plans to deploy intermediate range ballistic missiles to Asia “within months” — an ambitious timeline which of course never materialized, nevertheless a prospect that’s remained on the table ever since, driving tensions higher as part of what Beijing has slammed repeatedly as Washington’s “Cold War mentality”.

In a new statement China’s Foreign Ministry has vowed it will take “countermeasures” should any US ally in the region agree to host American missiles.

Via Reuters

“The US attempt to deploy land-based, medium-range missiles is consistent with its increasing military presence in the Asia Pacific and so-called ‘Indo-Pacific strategy’ over the past years, is a typical demonstration of its Cold War mentality,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said on Friday.

“If the US side goes ahead with its plans (for deploying intermediate range missiles in the Asia-Pacific Region – TASS), China will take the necessary countermeasures to protect its interests in the field of security,” the statement continued.

“China is calling upon the Asia-Pacific countries to realize the real purpose of US actions and their grave effects and to avoid pulling chestnuts out of the fire for others,” Zhao added.

Further calling it a “blatant provocation” the statement underscored that it’s part of a broader pattern of Washington’s erosion of global and regional stability through its “words and deeds”.

Beijing slammed any potential future missile host nation in Asia as revealing some countries act as mere pawns of the US. “We also call on countries in the Asia Pacific region to be soberly aware of the true intention behind and severe consequences of the US move, and refrain from acting as a pawn for the US,” Zhao said.

At least initially, it would likely only be Guam that would see any early missile deployment.

The lengthy and fierce comments came in response US Special Presidential Envoy for Arms Control Marshall Billingslea indicating in a recent interview with Japanese media that the US will discuss the prospect of hosting missiles with some countries in the region.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3aQFKL7 Tyler Durden