Mexican Standoff Continues: AMLO Claims US-Mexico Oil Deal At G-20, OPEC+ Denies Knowledge

Mexican Standoff Continues: AMLO Claims US-Mexico Oil Deal At G-20, OPEC+ Denies Knowledge

After last night’s dramatic Mexican standoff, headlines this morning are as confused and disorienting as ever.

In a speech delivered from Mexico City, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) told the G-20 that it has a new deal… and the ‘standoff’ is over.

AMLO began by noting that it’s very difficult to cut output (just as it is for every nation we suspect) and explained how he has managed to reverse a 14-year decline in oil production.

Mexico will cut production by 100,000 barrels a day, as it argued for yesterday, and the U.S. will make an additional contribution of 250,000 barrels a day.

As Bloomberg’s Javier Blas notes, AMLO gave no indication of what the “contribution” of 250,000 barrels a day from the U.S. means – it could be an undertaking to buy that volume of Mexican crude for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Either way, it seems there’s a diplomatic fudge, with lots of creative math, to unlock the deal.

“It’s a done deal,” AMLO said.

The only problem with all this “we have a deal” talk…

Several OPEC+ delegations were completely unaware of AMLO’s “deal” with the group, delegates tell Bloomberg’s Javier Blas, who adds that AMLO claims he reached a deal with Trump and immediately informed OPEC+ at 7:30 p.m. yesterday.

“Now they know how we are contributing.”

It seems very unclear whether any deal has been agreed to… and furthermore, if Mexico has moved in any way from its position overnight (a 100k cut – which is around a quarter of the 400k cut that OPEC has demanded.. or is the US “contribution” supposed to make up for that?).

Did Trump, following his “great call” with Putin and MbS overnight, tell AMLO top say anything just to get a deal done? The question now is will the Saudis back down and accept whatever fudged compromise Trump, Putin, and AMLO may have cooked up?

And, as we noted last night, if Mexico is granted this exception, then all other OPEC members – at least the non-Saudi ones – would demand similar treatment, forcing Saudi Arabia to should all of the production cuts, which would then nearly double from 4MMb/d to 8MMb/d.

While futures markets are closed across the world on this Good Friday, IG’s spread markets (as illiquid as they may be) are open, and there has been negligible reaction to these headlines so far…

Source: IG

Which makes perfect sense since, as Goldman’s Damien Courvalin explains, even if the cuts were agreed today, it would still be too little and too late to prevent a decline in prices in coming weeks as storage capacity becomes saturated.

First, the equitable c. 23% country level cuts used by OPEC+ (instead of the typically higher core-OPEC share) allows for a large headline cut but also implies lower compliance.

Second, it leaves the effective voluntary cuts too small to avoid breaching storage capacity, ensuring that low oil prices force all producers to contribute to the market rebalancing with some of the shut-ins likely to prove persistent, creating a faster oil rebalancing.

Ultimately, this simply reflects that no voluntary cuts could be large enough to offset the 19 mb/d average April-May demand loss due to the coronavirus. Such an outcome was already visible today, with the large Cushing crude inventory build reported by Genscape driving a further collapse in May-June WTI timespreads to -$6.0/bbl.

We expect further weakness in WTI timespreads and crude prices in coming weeks, with downside risks to our short-term $20/bbl forecast (especially if a deal is not reached).


Tyler Durden

Fri, 04/10/2020 – 09:08

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

Global Coronavirus Death Toll Nears 100k As Thousands Die In Britain & America: Live Updates

Global Coronavirus Death Toll Nears 100k As Thousands Die In Britain & America: Live Updates

The number of new coronavirus cases confirmed worldwide climbed at a rate of roughly 85k overnight yesterday, a rate that was roughly consistent with the prior two days. That would lead scientists to believe that the global outbreak might finally have “plateaued” – word that’s been thrown a lot lately.

Unfortunately, while the number of new cases remained stable, deaths in the US and UK continued to climb. But while thousands of families bid a distant farewell to their loved ones, the Fed’s latest intervention – couched as a lifeline for small business – has sent badly beaten junk bonds on their strongest daily rally since 2009 as spreads collapsed.

Now that the Fed has apparently extinguished credit risk from the market, ensuring that thousands of “zombie” firms will continue to borrow at extremely attractive rates, allowing them to lumber on through another day as ‘moral hazard’ is extinguished. What’s worse, almost, is that no one seems to care.

With markets around the world closed for Good Friday, and millions of Christians around the world observing the holiday while stuck inside their homes, the biggest story of the day is the fact that the global death toll will likely top 100k before midnight on the East Coast of the US. Roughly 17k – about 20% – of those deaths are from the US.

Then again, it’s extremely likely that the true number of deaths has already passed that number, as more reports are finding that Americans are almost certainly being left out of the counted dead, just like many Italians and Chinese probably were.

With Easter just two days away, the notion of reopening the American economy before the holiday now seems laughable. But with millions of Americans struggling to hang on without their jobs or the unemployment promised by states, Congress and the president, the administration appears to still be working diligently on its plan to start reopening the economy by the beginning of next month.

The news was met with the same hysterical warnings by health experts and anxious liberals insisting that a “premature” reopening would be disastrous because restrictions have barely had time to work. Of course, these sample people spent Thursday celebrating the wisdom of Dr. Anthony Fauci after he lowered his expectations for American fatalities by 75% from 240k to just 60k.

We’re not trying to criticize the good doctor, or assign blame; we’re merely trying to make the point that starting to plan out the eventual reopening of the economy is probably prudent, and by May 1, most of the US will have been shut down for almost 6 weeks. Even with money from the government, the $1,200 stimulus checks plus ramped up unemployment benefits still won’t be enough to save millions of Americans from the worst effects of the coming depression.

In New York, deaths have soared over the past week, but the unfortunate upside of that is that space in the city’s hospitals has opened up pretty rapidly. The Javits Center, which has been converted to a COVID-19 hospital, is almost empty, as is the USNS Comfort, the Navy ship docked at Manhattan’s Pier 90. While contract workers have been brought on the bury the dead victims on Hart Island, Cuomo says that the curve may already be starting to flatten – but, of course, that doesn’t mean we should let up on the social distancing measures.

Elsewhere, the feud between Taiwan and the WHO is getting so bitter as the NGO continues to ignore the amazing success Taiwan has had containing the outbreak. President Trump’s harsh words for the WHO have prompted many Taiwanese to praise Trump, even as American liberals – the same ones who purportedly supported the Hong Kong protesters – cringe. WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has accused the Taiwanese government of trying to smear him.

Meanwhile, in the latest sign that the Trump administration’s heavy-handed approach to handling Iran is working, the regime said it plans to accelerate the privatization of certain state-run assets as the Trump administration moves to block $5 billion of IMF aid that it has asked for.

As Japan confronts a surprising resurgence in new cases, it’s looking like it’s not the only East Asian nation having trouble containing the outbreak as a ‘second wave’ looms over the Continent. Even as Abe struggles against the strictures of the Japanese Constitution, which protects individual liberty to an extremely high degree, a big data analysis shared by WaPo shows Tokyo’s state of emergency (a state of emergency has been declared by Abe in 7 prefectures, but most of the restrictions are voluntary) is having an impact on life in one of the world’s busiest cities. But it’s still far from having the kind of effect needed to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Malaysia has once again extended its national lockdown for two weeks as the country tries to slow the rate of coronavirus infection. As a result of this second extension, the restrictions on daily life and business will run until April 28. At 4,346, Malaysia has the highest number of confirmed cases in southeast. Asia and counts 70 deaths. Indonesia, meanwhile, reported 219 new cases of coronavirus and 26 new deaths, bringing its confirmed-case total to 3,512 and 306 deaths. The Indonesian government has already publicly acknowledged lying about the outbreak, and it’s extremely likely that the virus is far more widepsread in the country of more than 200 million.

In Spain, figures released on Friday showed that 15,843 people have died so far after contracting coronavirus in the country, with 605 of them in the last 24 hours. That compares with a peak of 950 daily deaths just over a week ago and is the lowest death toll for over two weeks. But such figures are likely to undercount the number of mortalities, since they include only proven rather than probable cases of Covid-19, the illness caused by coronavirus.

Before we end, as Chicago’s Mayor Lori Lightfoot tries to convince residents of her hard-hit city to follow the ‘social distancing’ directives, she shared a story with one interviewer about personally breaking up what she described as “an underage drinking party” on the North Side of the city.

“We pulled by and I told the driver, ‘Back up,’ [and] rolled down the window,” she said, before telling the group: “Hey, you’re too close. Separate yourself. Social distancing!'”

 


Tyler Durden

Fri, 04/10/2020 – 08:59

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

Wall Street Has Now Morphed Into A Full Blown Soviet Sausage Factory

Wall Street Has Now Morphed Into A Full Blown Soviet Sausage Factory

Via Global Macro Monitor,

To paraphrase the police officer who told me my old neighborhood had burned down during the 2017 NorCal fires,  “the markets are no more.”

After the Fed announced it is bailing out junk bonds today,  Wall Street has now morphed into a full-blown  “Soviet Sausage Factory.

Jay Powell probably had no choice and needed to blunt the blow of another 6 million-plus print of new unemployment claims but isn’t Socialism and state intervention dandy?

We can understand providing support to local and state municipalities,  now strapped with severe cash flow problems as their tax revenues have gone to near zero,  but junk?

You know, like many of the same companies that levered up to buy back shares while shitting all over their employees or, say, the wildcat and shale-oil drillers?   Even Jed Clampett and Ellie May understood Texas Tea is risky business.  Come on, man.

Chapter 11 and debt restructurings are not only the right thing to do but the only thing to do lest we lose an entire generation to stagflation and a zombie economy. 

That’s probably the best case unless the economy miraculously snaps back, which assumes the economy was structurally sound before the virus took it out.   We seriously doubt that.

Here’s to hoping the bailouts are just a bridge to a major economic restructuring with the long-needed structural reforms.

Waste Of Time

There’s no sense in wasting time analyzing the markets anymore.

We will sit on cash and gold, hope and pray the virus soon passes, and try and tune out this shit show until the major political dislocation that is surely coming on the other side.

“No One Will Fail”

Just heard a trader on CNBC say, “no one will be allowed to fail…earnings don’t matter…nothing matters.”  Oh. My. God!

Wasn’t it just a few months ago the government was going after the young who were falling behind in their student loan payments?

Example: Judy has weekly disposable pay of $300. Based on the minimum wage calculation, she definitely gets to keep $217.50. The government can then take the lesser of the amount his income exceeds $217.50 ($300 – $217.50 = $82.50) or 15% of his income (15% of $300= $45.00). Since $45.00 is less than $82.50, this is the amount the government can take each week from Judy’s wages.

– SLBA

Gosplan Setting Prices Now

Most asset prices are no longer determined by market forces — which has been the case for many for some time — but now set by our new Gosplan along with the local Commissar of Free Money, just like the price of eggs way back in the USSR.

I never ever wanna hear from the self-righteous, ignorant ideologues parading as economists again,

“Free market capitalism is the best path to prosperity to Socialism….blah, fucking blah.”

How twisted and sick is our society that the grocery clerks making $12-15 per hour working on the frontline, risking their lives and getting sick to feed us and the 10 percent now profiting from these government bailouts (88 percent of stocks are owned by the Top 10 percent)?

But, wait for it…their thousand dollar check is in the mail.

Come on, folks, give these people a big, as in Bengie big or a large fraction thereof, tip the next time you’re out.  I have no doubt many of you already do and will continue until this plague passes.

A note from a Bernie Bro,

“In 2016, they told me if I voted for Bernie, the nation would move closer to authoritarianism,  managed trade, MMT, and socialism.  I voted for Bernie and man were they right.” 

– Bernie Bro


Tyler Durden

Fri, 04/10/2020 – 08:45

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

Pentagon Warns Of New Coronavirus ‘Breakouts’ Aboard USS Nimitz Supercarrier

Pentagon Warns Of New Coronavirus ‘Breakouts’ Aboard USS Nimitz Supercarrier

After a disastrous couple of weeks for the US Navy which not only saw a nuclear aircraft carrier be diverted from its mission over coronavirus aboard the ship, but witnessed an embarrassing public spat over the dismissal of the USS Theodore Roosevelt’s Captain Brett Crozier, itself leading to the resignation of Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly, an outbreak may have struck another major carrier crew. 

On Thursday the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. John Hyten warned of a new coronavirus outbreak aboard the USS Nimitz nuclear supercarrier at a moment the vessel is scheduled for deployment to the Pacific region.

“There’s been a very small number of breakouts on the Nimitz, and we’re watching that very closely,” Gen. Hyten said during a Pentagon briefing, indicating the sailors had “been isolated on the ship.”

USS Nimitz aircraft carrier, lead ship in the Nimitz class, file image.

Given the very public crisis the much bigger outbreak aboard the USS Roosevelt created, now with at least 416 COVID-19 positive cases, it will be interesting to see whether the Nimitz actually delays embarking on its mission from Bremerton, Washington – which is where the ship is based. 

At this point it appears only two of the ship’s crew have been treated for COVID-19 symptoms, while a third has also been tested but as yet unconfirmed. Hyten expressed the Navy is extremely wary and is taking heightened precautions given the tight close-quarters aboard its vessels, with sometimes up to two dozen sailors bunking in a single room

Alarmingly, Gen. Hyten had discussed contingency plans should the outbreak spread among the crew: “Not enough local hotel space exists in Bremerton, Washington, where the ship is based, for its commanders to quarantine crew members, so they’re attempting to isolate them on board, the general said.”

Military Times reports that commanders have already slightly altered the carrier’s operations out of an abundance of caution:

On April 1, the ship went into what the Navy calls “fast cruise” status, in which no one on board was allowed to disembark for any reason. Anyone who must come aboard – such as a specialist to fix a broken piece of equipment – must first undergo medical testing and wear a protective mask while on the ship.

Other ships are also being monitored, after at the end of last month the USS Ronald Reagan also reportedly had at least two sailors that tested positive for COVID-19.

USS Nimitz at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard & Intermediate Maintenance Facility in Bremerton, Wash. File image via Naval Sea Systems Command.

In that case Fox News cited unnamed US officials while the Pentagon was not forthcoming in acknowledging the reported cases.

It was also unclear whether the individuals were actually part of the Yokosuka base in Japan, which had earlier gone on lockdown over outbreak fears. 


Tyler Durden

Fri, 04/10/2020 – 08:20

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/39XKuwF Tyler Durden

UK Cops Threaten To Search Shopping Baskets To Catch “Lockdown” Violators

UK Cops Threaten To Search Shopping Baskets To Catch “Lockdown” Violators

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

A police force in the UK threatened to start searching people’s shopping baskets in order to catch coronavirus lockdown violators, but later had to backtrack following a public backlash.

Northamptonshire Police chief constable Nick Adderley prompted outrage after he appeared in a video to warn people who were buying unessential items at grocery stores that their purchases may be scrutinized by the authorities.

“We will not at this stage be starting to marshal supermarkets and checking the items in baskets and trolleys to see whether it’s a legitimate, necessary item but again be under no illusion, if people do not heed the warnings and the pleas that I’m making today, we will start to do that,” said Adderley.

Adderley also said police checkpoints would be set up if people didn’t properly adhere to quarantine rules, warning that a “three-week grace period” in his county was over.

“If things don’t improve, and we don’t get the compliance we would expect, then the next stage will be road blocks and it will be stopping people to ask why they are going, where they’re going,” he said.

The police force later had to backtrack from Adderley’s comments, tweeting, “To clarify some suggestions made in the media, we absolutely will NOT be searching people’s shopping trolleys in Northamptonshire.”

UK Home Secretary Priti Patel also told a radio station that such measures were “not appropriate.”

“This is not about heavy-handed law enforcement. I think I really must emphasize that. There’s a balance to this,” she commented.

Big Brother Watch’s Silkie Carlo said Adderley’s suggestions were “outrageous.”

“It would be completely disproportionate for police to start investigating shopping baskets or stopping every car at road checks, and there’s no legal basis for them to do so,” she remarked.

This is by no means the first time a UK police force has faced heat for using draconian measures to impose the COVID-19 lockdown.

Derbyshire Police were ridiculed after they used a surveillance drone to spy on dog walkers in remote countryside and then publicly shamed them online by posting the video.

The same police force also dyed a blue lagoon black in order to deter people from gathering there.

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Tyler Durden

Fri, 04/10/2020 – 07:55

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Gundlach Warns Stay Away From Gold ETFs: “What Happens If Everyone Wants Delivery”

Gundlach Warns Stay Away From Gold ETFs: “What Happens If Everyone Wants Delivery”

The internal mechanics of the gold market are again showing strains under this rally. The gap between New York futures and spot prices in London is still elevated, a sign of lingering concern over future supply of the physical form of the metal.

While investors continue to seek gold as a haven, it’s still difficult to ship bullion around the world due to coronavirus-related restrictions, sending futures prices even higher.

As Bloomberg reports, until recently, that was unheard of in a metal that’s so utterly fungible, so easy to transport and where trade channels are so deeply established. But with planes grounded and refining capacity severely restricted, don’t expect the arbitrage to break down immediately.

“People are paying the premiums over in the physical market and I think it’s rolling into the futures,” said Peter Thomas, a senior vice president at Chicago-based broker Zaner Group.

“It’s safe-haven buying. People are scared.”

As The Fed unleashed its “we’ll buy any old crap” policy today, gold prices hit a new cycle high…

As demand shows no sign of slowing…

“Unprecedented monetary and fiscal stimulus, negative yielding debt and low interest rates for longer imply gold will continue to attract a flight to safety and quality,” Suki Cooper, precious metals analyst at Standard Chartered Plc, said in a note.

The unprecedented action by The Fed (and Treasury) has begun to raise doubts about the sovereign credit risk of the US…

And has sparked huge inflows into the major gold ETFs as investors seek safe-havens…

In fact, gold holdings across all known gold ETFs has exploded higher in 10 of the last 11 months since The Fed started its ‘NotQE’ rejuvenation of the repo markets…

This massive flow into ETFs combined with the internal gold market strain has spooked one major investor – DoubleLine Capital CEO Jeffrey Gundlach – who recently warned investors piling into gold-backed ETFs:

Don’t think you’ll get the physical metal back.

While ETFs such as GLD are backed by physical gold, the process for an individual investor to acquire the actual bullion isn’t as simple as selling shares of the ETF.

In fact, as Olivier Garret detailed previously, you may be surprised to learn gold ETFs don’t give you exposure to gold – but, it’s true.

The GLD prospectus states “GLD represents fractional, undivided interest in the Trust.” When you invest in a gold ETF, you are buying shares of the Trustee. Basically, you are a shareholder of the trust, not a gold holder.

As such, GLD shares represent a paper claim on gold, not gold itself. This negates a major reason for owning it – protection during crises. If the economy collapsed and brought down a part of the financial system with it, the Trustee will settle your claim in cash, not gold.

The real irony is the price of gold could be skyrocketing and the ETFs could be going bankrupt at the same time.

Given these issues, long-term investors would be wise to avoid gold ETFs.

“Paper gold” ETFs are little more than speculative vehicles, Gundlach said, and buyers should be aware that holding shares doesn’t amount to having gold bars.

“What happens if physical gold is in short supply and everyone wants to take delivery of their paper gold?” Gundlach said.

“They can’t squeeze blood out of a stone.”

As Bloomberg reports, the process of swapping GLD shares for physical gold sits “outside of normal dealings,” according to State Street Global Advisors head of ETF research Matthew Bartolini.

Bank of New York Mellon, the fund’s trustee, doesn’t interact with the public but only with middlemen known as authorized participants – traders who channel assets in and out of the fund. An investor would have to work with one of GLD’s APs to acquire gold, he said.

“An individual investor wishing to exchange the Trust’s shares for physical gold would have to come to the appropriate arrangements with his or her broker and an authorized participant to receive the gold bars,” Bartolini wrote in an email.

Now that sounds very straightforward eh?

E.B. Tucker, director of Metalla Royalty & Streaming, told the news site Kitco that “there’s maybe around $100 of paper gold trading for every ounce of real gold that’s in New York vaults.”

Unlike physical gold bullion – which is a tangible asset – ETFs are a financial product that have counterparty risk. Counterparty risk is present when there’s a possibility the other party in an agreement will default or fail to live up to their obligations.

In fact, one of gold’s primary benefits is being the only financial asset that is not simultaneously somebody else’s liability. Therefore, these ETFs are a poor substitute.

“Before this is over, gold is going to go up a lot,” commodity investor Jim Rogers said by phone from Singapore.

“Whenever people lose confidence in money and in governments, they always buy gold and silver.”

There is one group of market participants that refuse to use “paper” gold to get exposure to the counterparty risk-free hedge for political idiocy… the world’s sovereign reserve funds…

“Central banks have officially lost control of their most powerful policy tools,” said Roy Sebag, chief executive officer and founder of Goldmoney Inc., a precious-metal investment firm with $2 billion in assets.

“It is against this macroeconomic sea change that gold will thrive as the money par excellence.”

Is it any wonder that physical gold is in shortage (and trading at a premium)?


Tyler Durden

Fri, 04/10/2020 – 07:30

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

EU Court Of Justice Rules Poland, Hungary, & Czech Republic Broke EU Law

EU Court Of Justice Rules Poland, Hungary, & Czech Republic Broke EU Law

Authored by Judith Bergman via The Gatestone Institute,

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has ruled that Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic broke EU law when they refused to take in migrants under the European Union’s September 2015 relocation agreement. During the 2015 migrant crisis, EU leaders agreed to relocate 160,000 migrants and refugees EU-wide, assigning each EU member state a fixed quota from the camps in Italy and Greece, where migrants and refugees were arriving in record numbers. However, the Czech Republic accepted only 12 of the 2,000 refugees assigned it, while Hungary and Poland took in none.

In 2017, the EU took Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) over that refusal to take migrants. On April 2, 2020, the CJEU ruled against the three countries. The ruling followed the October 2019 recommendation by the Court’s Advocate General, legal advisor to the Court, which said that EU law must be followed and that the EU’s principle of solidarity “necessarily sometimes implies accepting burden-sharing”.

In its judgment, the Court dismissed the three countries’ argument that they were entitled to refuse the relocation scheme based on concerns for the maintenance of law and order and the safeguarding of internal security. The Court agreed that those concerns constituted legitimate reasons to derogate from obligations of EU law. However, the Court ruled that EU member states refusing to take in migrants under the relocation scheme could only legitimately do so if they proved, “following a case-by-case investigation, on consistent, objective and specific evidence that provides grounds for suspecting that the applicant in question represents an actual or potential danger”.

As Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic had not proven any specific and concrete danger for each of the migrants that they refused to take in under the relocation scheme, they had not been justified in “suspending the implementation of or even ceasing to implement its obligations under the relocation decisions”.

The Court’s ruling comes at a time when the European Union is experiencing unprecedented disunity over the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and just weeks after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s recent, and muscular attempts at utilizing migrants for the purpose of political blackmail against EU leaders.

The ruling effectively removes the sovereignty of EU member states to make their own decisions regarding the keeping of public law, order and national security in the case of EU migration policies, if those decisions conflict with EU obligations. The ruling does so by setting up criteria that are impossible to meet. A “case-by-case investigation, on consistent, objective and specific evidence that provides grounds for suspecting that the applicant in question represents an actual or potential danger” is unworkable today for the following reasons:

The EU’s own European Migration Network, an “EU network of migration and asylum experts who work together to provide objective, comparable policy-relevant information”, which works under the auspices of the European Commission, published a report in 2017, “Challenges and practices for establishing the identity of third country nationals in migration procedures”. According to the report, which was based on input from almost all EU member states:

“Generally, (Member) States observed an increase in the number of international protection applicants unable to provide a valid proof of identity… Most (Member) States reported that applicants for international protection are often not able to provide official travel and/or identity documents, and even if these are provided, a further challenge lies in determining whether these are genuine”.

Given these documented difficulties, why did the Court set up criteria — “case-by-case investigation, on consistent, objective and specific evidence that provides grounds for suspecting that the applicant in question represents an actual or potential danger” — that are entirely unrealistic?

In addition, the ruling of the court goes against evidence that migration flows into Europe do indeed constitute a real security danger that has cost European lives. In his November 2019 report, “What Terrorist Migration Over European Borders Can Teach About American Border Security”, Todd Bensman, a senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, described the extent to which terrorists disguised as migrants have entered the European Union to commit terrorist attacks.

According to Bensman:

“Between January 2014 and January 2018, at least 104 Islamist extremists entered Europe by way of migration…The majority of the 104 Islamist migrant-terrorists — 75 — were primarily affiliated with ISIS, while 13 were affiliated with Jabhat al Nusra… Of the 104 migrants implicated in terrorist acts, 29 were involved in 16 completed attacks inside Europe between 2015 and 2018. These attacks killed 170 people and wounded at least 878 more, according to an analysis of media accounts… At least 27 were part of one large cell of operatives dispatched onto the migration trails by ISIS…Of the 65 migrant-terrorists involved in completed or thwarted attacks, at least 40 appeared to have been purposefully deployed into migrant flows toward Europe, impersonating war refugees, to conduct or support attacks in Europe. ISIS was responsible for this infiltration operation…”

How national authorities are supposed to distinguish between actual “war refugees” and terrorists impersonating war refugees is not suggested by the Court, which appears curiously uninterested in dealing with the reality of migration.

Another problem with the Court’s requirement that member states must prove that a migrant will constitute a potential or present danger to the maintenance of law and order is that this may also be impossible, even if a clean criminal record is available at the time that a migrant seeks to enter a country. The presence of large numbers of migrants from primarily the Middle East and North Africa has brought with it a documented increase in crimes that did not use to exist in European countries. One such crime is gang rape, which is now widespread in a country like Sweden, which has taken in very large numbers of migrants over the past several decades, but was literally unheard of until the 1980s. The mass sexual assaults on women by migrants in European cities such as Hamburg and Cologne, on New Year’s 2015-16, where it was estimated that 2,000 men, mainly migrants, sexually assaulted 1,200 women, was also a new kind of crime. “There is a connection between the emergence of this phenomenon and the rapid migration in 2015,” Holger Münch, president of the German Federal Crime Police Office, said in July 2016 about the incidents.

No amount of investigations by Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic could have possibly predicted what migrants, among the more than one million that entered into Europe during the 2015 migrant crisis, would participate in such crimes.

The Court’s ruling does not only contradict facts and common sense. It sends the distinct signal to foreign regimes, such as that of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, that sending migrants to the continent for whatever purpose, even political blackmail, will be successful, because European institutions, such as the Court of Justice of the European Union, will do their utmost to ensure that even the most rebellious EU member states, such as Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, will be forced to receive them.


Tyler Durden

Fri, 04/10/2020 – 06:00

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

Pope Francis: Pandemic Could Be ‘Nature’s Revenge’ For Ignoring Climate Change

Pope Francis: Pandemic Could Be ‘Nature’s Revenge’ For Ignoring Climate Change

Perhaps topping all other kooky ‘more progressive than thou’ statements of the past years, Pope Francis this week said something that sounds like he’s been quoted in an Onion or Babylon Bee headline, as if he’s in competition for hyperbolic absurdity with Greta Thunberg.

Instead it’s CNN, and it’s all too real — Francis actually implied in new statements on the coronavirus pandemic that it’s nature’s revenge for people ignoring climate change.

Pope Francis has said the coronavirus pandemic is one of “nature’s responses” to humans ignoring the current ecological crisis, CNN reports.

Image via Vatican media

The remarks were cited in a Wednesday interview with The Tablet and Commonwealth magazines, wherein the pope further described the crisis as an opportunity for mankind to “slow down the rate of production and consumption”.

“We did not respond to the partial catastrophes. Who now speaks of the fires in Australia, or remembers that 18 months ago a boat could cross the North Pole because the glaciers had all melted? Who speaks now of the floods?” the Pope said.

“I don’t know if these are the revenge of nature, but they are certainly nature’s responses,” he added, strongly suggesting that the ongoing deadly COVID-19 outbreak could be part of nature’s ‘response’ – given the pandemic was the focus of the interview.

“There is an expression in Spanish: ‘God always forgives, we forgive sometimes, but nature never forgives,’” the pope said in an interview published Wednesday in The Tablet, a United Kingdom-based Catholic weekly.

He actually said something similar in an interview with a Spanish journalist over two weeks ago, saying at that time when pressed about climate change and coronavirus: “Fires, earthquakes… nature is throwing a tantrum so that we will take care of her.”

AFP via Getty

The 83-year-old Pope himself appeared ill weeks ago, but has tested negative for the novel virus twice, according to reports. He’s been celebrating mass at the Vatican, including for Palm Sunday, in an empty St. Peter’s Basilica. 

Recall that near the end of last year Pope Francis was so fed up with ‘climate-change deniers’ that he was on the verge of declaring a new sin  ‘Ecological Sin’.

“We must introduce—we are thinking—into the Catechism of the Catholic Church the sin against ecology, the ecological sin against the common home, because it’s a duty,” the pope told an audience of legal experts at the Vatican in November 2019.

But we should point out that any attempt to equate ‘man-made climate change’ with a global pandemic, however remotely, is a truly new and strange notion given the deadliest outbreaks in history like the ‘Black Death’ which wiped out an estimated 75-125 million people in the 14th century was obviously long before the advent of industrialization, mass consumption, and the threat of the “carbon footprint”.


Tyler Durden

Thu, 04/09/2020 – 19:49

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‘It’s Safer In Beirut’: Americans Rebuff US Govt Offer To Return Home To Global Epicenter 

‘It’s Safer In Beirut’: Americans Rebuff US Govt Offer To Return Home To Global Epicenter 

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced this week that in total 50,000 Americans have been brought home to US soil after being stranded abroad amid the coronavirus pandemic and accompanying country shutdowns. 

“We have bought more than 50,000 Americans back home from more than 90 counties,” Pompeo said Wednesday. But given that since the end of last month the United States has become the global epicenter, leading the world in confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths, Americans abroad increasingly don’t want to come home, even when offered a ‘free ride’

“I think that I am probably safer here,” one US citizen in Beirut, Lebanon said after after the US embassy offered to fly Americans out of the country. “I made that decision for a combination of personal reasons and calculations about the virus that we’re all making,” said the Montana resident, Carly Fuglei, who decided the risk for exposure in the US is much higher.

Beirut file image, via Anadolu Agency

Another, Beirut-based freelance journalist Abby Sewell, said she’s not taking the offer either, given that, “From everything I’m reading, the situation is worse in the US, in terms of the number of cases, prevention measures or lack thereof, and how overburdened the health system is.”

“For once I’m like no America is not safer than here,” Lebanese journalist Dala Mawad added

Some US and dual citizens deciding to weather the pandemic crisis in other countries also worry about lack of health insurance and potential medical costs should they get sick upon return to the US. Others might calculate that the risk of international air travel — even if facilitated by the State Department — could itself increase possible exposure. 

In the case of Lebanon the US flew nearly one hundred out of the Middle East country at the start of the week.

Beirut International Airport, via Flickr

“On the morning of April 5, the US embassy flew 95 US citizens out of Lebanon, according to a US State Department official. It is estimated that thousands of Americans live in Lebanon  many of whom also hold Lebanese citizenship,” CNN reported.

Currently Lebanon has 582 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 19 deaths out of a population of over 6 million. US numbers on the other hand, appear to be doubling each week, now at over 430,000 cases, including over 14,800 deaths – most in New York.


Tyler Durden

Fri, 04/10/2020 – 05:15

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3aTNr2x Tyler Durden

Coronavirus Devastates Italy: Is It The Result Of Globalism And Free Trade?

Coronavirus Devastates Italy: Is It The Result Of Globalism And Free Trade?

Authored by Philip Giraldi via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

The devastating impact of the coronavirus on Italy has sparked considerable speculation as to why the country appears to have suffered so disproportionately from the disease.

Some initial theories suggested that the deaths might be due to lower standards and ill-advised practices in the Italian national health system, but the reality is that northern Italy, where the virus has struck hardest, has by most metrics better and more accessible health care than does the United States overall.

By one reckoning, the claimed number of dead is too high because anyone who tested positive and died had his or her death attributed to the virus even if it was actually due to other unrelated causes. And that argument has also been flipped on its head to demonstrate that the numbers are too low, using the fact that many Italians have not been tested for the virus to assert that many dead were actually caused by coronavirus. Since those dead were not medically confirmed positive for COVID-19, the deaths were erroneously attributed to other causes.

A third bit of somewhat more bizarre speculation centers on the fact that in September 2019 Italy made legal euthanasia for those with terminal illnesses seeking to end their suffering, a move strongly opposed by the Roman Catholic Church. Some of those weighing in on the number of deaths have claimed without evidence that a significant percentage of the dead were actually cases of euthanasia, i.e. implying that Italy has been deliberately killing off its elderly. Those seeking an explanation for such bizarre behavior by the national health service have suggested that it would be to ease pressure on the troubled Italian economy by eliminating old age pensions and medical costs.

Be that as it may, there is an interesting backstory developing in the Italian media about why Italy has been hit so hard by the “Chinese” virus in spite of the fact that it has been in lockdown for over one month. Italy’s ties with China, and with the city of Wuhan, where the virus may have originated, run deeper than with any other European country.

Last spring, when my wife and I were traveling in Northern Italy, we noticed the large numbers of Chinese, not only in tourism centers like Venice and Verona, but also in commercial and industrial areas. Italian shop holders we spoke with told us how the Chinese government and individual entrepreneurs were buying up businesses and properties at an alarming rate, penetrating the Italian economy at all levels. One gift shop proprietor in Venice described how even tourist items were increasingly being manufactured in China, a development which he described as “selling cheap junk.” He reached beneath his counter and produced a perfume bottle which looked like a local product but instead of being made in Murano it bore a tiny stamp “Made in China.”

A little less than a year ago Italy became the first G-7 country in Europe to sign a memorandum of understanding formalizing its membership in the Chinese Belt and Road project, part of the Silk Road scheme to create a vast linked commercial network across Asia and into Europe. Two of the main hubs being developed for the project are Genoa and Trieste. The Italian government, confronted with a struggling economy, based the move on “commercial reasons” and “economic advantages,” to include the investment being offered by Beijing, but Rome paid a price for the move with intense criticism coming from both Washington and Brussels. The Atlanticist crowd, which normally applauded a form of globalism and free trade, inevitably insisted that not only were the Chinese seeking to “destabilize” Europe, Beijing was also attempting to divide Europe politically and militarily from the United States.

One of the more interesting, and perhaps coincidental, aspects of the Chinese entry into Italy has been the particular connection between China and the northern Italian fashion houses, centered on Milan, that have shifted their production to Wuhan to take advantage of the cheap labor in China’s own textile industry, largely centered on the city. By all accounts, Chinese investors bought up factories in Northern Italy starting in the early 1990s. By 2016 many major brands had been completely acquired, to include Pinco Pallino, Miss Sixty, Sergio Tacchini, Roberta di Camerino and Mariella Burani while major shares of Salvatore Ferragamo and Caruso were also obtained.

The Chinese owners and investors replaced ageing machinery and brought in, often illegally, tens of thousands of skilled Chinese seamstresses as a labor force. By the end of last year when the virus first struck China, direct flights from Wuhan to Lombardy served the roughly 300,000 Chinese residents of Italy who mostly work in Chinese-owned factories producing Chinese inspired Made in Italy designs. It is widely believed, though not confirmed by the Rome government, that the first infections by coronavirus in Italy, attributed to visiting “tourists,” actually may have taken place in crowded dormitories where Chinese shift workers from Wuhan dined and slept.

In less than a year, however, Italians have come to realize that a tight economic embrace with Beijing also has a downside. Italy’s trade gap with China has gone up, not down and much promised investment in new enterprises has failed to materialize. But even as the dust cleared, the results derived from opening the door to China were not pretty. By 2016, Chinese acquisitions had exceeded 52 billion EUROS, giving them ownership of more than 300 companies representing 27% of major Italian corporations.

The Bank of China now owns five major banks in Italy as well as the major telecommunication corporation (Telecom) and the two top energy utilities (ENI and ENEL). China also has controlling interest in Fiat-Chrysler and Pirelli.

More recently, Italian government views on China’s human rights record in Hong Kong have hardened and the country’s legislature has rejected overtures by the Chinese telecommunications conglomerate Huawei to have a major role in developing the country’s new 5G technology. One might observe, however, that the barn door is being closed after the horse has already escaped.

To limit the damage, the Chinese have sweetened their economic expansion into Western Europe by carefully integrating trade with humanitarian initiatives to make the transformation palatable to the local populations. The Health Silk Road initiative is a major exercise of soft power which has, in the current crisis, provided various forms of emergency medical assistance to a number of European nations. In doing so, it has done more than the European Union or the United States. Italy currently has three Chinese medical teams assisting its doctors in and around Milan and has benefited from airlifted medical supplies to include millions of masks and testing kits.

China is not doing what it does for altruistic reasons. It sees itself as the major economic driver of a new globalism, displacing an increasingly foundering and incapable United States, which has dominated world finance and commerce since the Second World War. For China COVID-19 is seen as an opportunity to reconfigure the playing field in its favor.

The experience of Italy, which may have become an epicenter for the virus due to its close commercial and personal ties to China, is illustrative of how globalism and free trade being promoted by a number of engaged groups in many countries can be exploited to create a new reality. Beijing is shaping that reality while the U.S. and E.U. stand on the sideline and watch.


Tyler Durden

Fri, 04/10/2020 – 04:30

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3edBOp0 Tyler Durden