Category: zerohedge

Authored by Bilal Hafeez via MacroHive.com,

With the large Conservative majority in government, both UK markets and the economy are likely to enter a honeymoon period in the months ahead. While many are focused on Brexit as the main shock that could hit the UK economy, there are at least three other potential shocks that could be as significant.

And crucially they could all materialise in the next five years during the term of the newly elected UK government:

(1) Recession shock

Since the 1950s there has been a recession every nine years on average. The last UK recession was in 2008 around the global financial crisis, and we are now entering 2020. So on that metric, we are overdue. Perhaps the UK facing no inflation problem (allowing the Bank of England to keep interest rates very low) has kept a recession at bay. Equally, perhaps the US fiscal stimulus of recent years has prolonged the global business cycle, and the UK has been a beneficiary.

But the odds of a UK recession in the next five years are very high. There is no new large China-sized economy that will emerge like it did in the 2000s. Nor are tech advances having the same economy-wide productivity boosts as they were in the 1990s. At the same time, UK debt levels are high, the UK current account deficit is widening, and unit labour costs are on the rise. All these factors suggest the foundations for a recession are being set. And though the timing is unclear, within the first term of the new UK government looks probable.

(2) Market shock

No economies escaped the trauma of the 2008 financial crisis, not even the UK. It was caused by credit-fuelled asset bubbles, notably in real estate. Banks were at the heart of this and, ever since 2008, they have been regulated to ensure such a crisis will not repeat itself. However, crises typically do not follow the script of their predecessors. The next crisis will probably occur just where regulators fail to focus, or worse, because of mistakes regulators make where they have been focused.

The most obvious candidate would be a crisis in the non-bank financial sector. Regulators have constrained bank balance sheets, while asset managers have more freedom. Moreover, private markets – where private equity and leveraged finance live – have exploded. And these have even fewer constraints.

Perhaps the biggest advantage these players have is that they can more easily invest in illiquid assets. And much like banks incorrectly valued their ‘level 3’ assets in the run-up to 2008, private equity and asset managers could be overvaluing their illiquid assets. Their potentially obvious error would be to assume those assets have liquid markets into which they can be sold.

Already in the UK we have seen the Woodford fund and M&G property funds suffer on this score. In the US we have seen spikes in the repo market as pools of liquidity have been segmented. If these are the early signs, then we could be in for a much larger market liquidity shock. This could have far-reaching consequences for the economy, especially business investment and household wealth.

(3) Pension shock

The long-heralded pension crisis is almost upon us. Twenty years ago in the UK, one in eight people were over the age of 65. Today that number is nearing one in five. Throw in people in their fifties and early sixties, then close to 40% of the population are worrying about their pensions.

What makes matters worse is that people are expected to live well beyond the statutory retirement age of 65. For example, on a cohort-basis, women in the UK are now expected to live to 92 years. That means – at the current age of retirement – potentially 27 years living off their pensions. The trouble is that current pension schemes will only offer on average 28% of earlier earnings in retirement. This is well below the OECD average of 60% and closer to what is seen in Mexico and Lithuania than France (74%), Germany (52%) or even the US (49%). This is a recipe for social unrest.

But what will trigger a crisis in the coming years is the collapse in bond yields. In the 1990s and 2000s, UK 10-year bond yields (adjusted for inflation) averaged over 4%. As a pension fund, if you compounded this out, funding future retirement benefits was straightforward. However, in the 2010s, the real yield has collapsed to 0.15%. Worse still, since 2017 the real yield has been negative. Now the compounding accelerates against pension funds.

Of course, many pension funds, especially in the public sector with its crippling defined benefits, have diversified into private equity and other riskier investments. The trouble with these are that their returns are falling too. If anything, they appear to be converging to those of public equity markets. This begs the question, why is the public sector paying the high fees of private equity to get an illiquid version of public equity returns?

In the end, public sector workers and others will need to increase their contributions to make up for any shortfalls. One of the largest pension schemes in the UK, the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS), did try to do just that. However, their request was met by university lecturers and support workers going on strike. This is likely just the beginning. And lest one think this a UK problem – French workers have recently taken to the streets over sweeping pension reforms

Bottom Line

The UK is not only facing the potential of a Brexit-related shock, but there are three other plausible shocks and crises the UK government will face in its five-year term. This will require adept and creative central bank policy – that crucially will have to differ from the post-2008 policies that have led to these coming crisis. Moreover, with the central bank policy toolkit severely constrained, the onus will be on the government to avert or mitigate these. But is it ready to do so?

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has hailed the completion of an against all odds landmark deal with Russia’s Gazprom as ensuring “energy security and prosperity for Ukrainians.” 

It will keep natural gas flowing to Western Europe via Ukraine for the next five years, which is estimated to net Ukraine $7 billion (€6.25 billion) in gas transit fees by 2024. 

After a series of compromise breakthroughs over the past weeks, including Gazprom paying out $2.9 billion legal settlement to Naftogaz and Kiev in turn agreeing to wave a separate legal claim, the two sides finally inked the historic deal on Monday, which signals a broader thawing in tensions and dramatic deescalation after Moscow and Kiev have for years stood on the brink of open war. 

Per Gazprom Chairman Alexey Miller, the accord has already gone into effect as of Tuesday: “After five days of uninterrupted negotiations in Vienna, definitive decisions have been made and final deals have been reached,” he said in a statement.

And Zelenskiy further presented it as an ‘everyone wins’ breakthrough: “Europe knows that we will not fail when it comes to energy security,” he said. Indeed European gas markets immediately felt the effects:

European gas and power prices extended declines after a last-gasp accord between Russia and Ukraine on natural gas flows averted a winter supply crisis.

According to Bloomberg’s analysis:

“There’s no more transit risk,” said Thierry Bros, an associate at Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian & Eurasian Studies. “We are in a world with a lot of LNG and piped gas and the Russians want to keep their market share in Europe.”

Benchmark Dutch gas prices dropped 0.7%, taking their record annual plunge to 44%. German power traded at its lowest level since May 2018.

This collective sigh of relief which came down to the wire, given the previous accord was set to expire on December 31, further comes ironically enough after sanctions-happy Washington has claimed all along to be acting in Ukraine and Europe’s best interest as it shouts “Russian interference” in Europe’s energy sector (especially given current US pressures over the Nord Stream 2 direct Russia-Germany pipeline). 

Clearly the parties now hailing the new deal don’t see it that way. Instead, all indicators suggest a slow rapprochement between Russia and Ukraine, driven by necessity of supplying energy to Europe, and given Russia naturally wants to keep its significant chunk of the European market online. 

It bears repeating that such good faith compromise between the two just isn’t supposed to happen! — that is according to the shrill cries of the neo-Cold War pundits who keep telling us Putin is not only bent on taking over Ukraine, but Europe as well — especially through gas and energy dominance.

Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

During colonial times, European powers exploited Africa for the vast resources that it possesses. But what China is doing today is actually much worse. Yes, the Chinese greatly desire African resources, but ultimately what they want is Africa itself. But instead of conquering Africa using military force, China is using economics instead. Today, more than 10,000 Chinese-owned firms are operating in Africa, and virtually every major road, bridge, railway and skyscraper is being built by the Chinese. As a result, most African nations are very deeply indebted to China at this point. And as you will see below, when those debts go bad that gives the Chinese a tremendous amount of leverage.

Many people believe that the endgame for China is to make a whole lot more money and to gain control over a whole lot more resources. And China is undoubtedly pursuing those goals, but as Forbes has noted, ultimately what this is about is turning Africa “into another Chinese continent”…

The reason Chinese corporations are in Africa is simple; to exploit the people and take their resources. It’s the same thing European colonists did during mercantile times, except worse. The Chinese corporations are trying to turn Africa into another Chinese continent. They are squeezing Africa for everything it is worth.

Right now, approximately two million Chinese citizens already live in Africa, and that number is steadily rising with each passing month.

These days, it is difficult to find a major construction project on the continent that is not being handled by the Chinese, and this has enabled them to put their imprint on some of the largest African cities. For example, just check out what is happening in Nairobi, Kenya…

On the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya, a small sign points to “Beijing Road,” where a new housing development called the Great Wall Apartments looks like the concrete towers you’d find in a Chinese city.

Across Africa, Chinese developers are building highways, light rail systems, apartment buildings, and entire cities.

Most of the “cities” that China is building are known as “special economic zones”. These “special economic zones” are essentially enormous self-sustaining Chinese cities that have been dropped right into some of the most strategic parts of Africa. For example, one of the biggest has been built right next to Lagos, Nigeria…

Next to Lagos, Nigeria, Chinese developers have built a walled-off “special economic zone”–basically a separate city, with separate rules designed to attract investors–based on a model they’ve used inside China for the last 30 years. After Shenzhen became a special economic zone in the 1980s, it went from a small town of 20,000 to, by some counts, 15 million today.

In these “special economic zones”, you will find Chinese factories staffed with Chinese managers that are supervising Chinese workers that are using Chinese equipment to make their products.

And the size of some of these projects is absolutely staggering. Just check out what has been planned for an area along the coast of Tanzania…

Bagamoyo, if the project goes ahead as planned, will be transformed into the largest port in Africa. That is looking ever more likely: after years of delay, the Tanzanian government says it is in the final stages of talks with state-run China Merchants Holdings International.

The lagoon will be dredged, to allow access to the vast cargo ships that will queue many miles out to sea. As for the special economic zone, the original masterplan shows factories in a fenced-off industrial area, and apartment blocks to accommodate the estimated future population of 75,000. There is even talk of an international airport. Many of the villagers have already accepted compensation for the loss of their homes.

Of course Chinese development is definitely not limited to these “special economic zones”. In Ethiopia, the capital city of the entire nation is literally becoming known as “the city that China built”…

Cars chug through the city on smooth Chinese roads, Chinese cranes lift the skyline, sewing machines hum in Chinese factories in Chinese-owned industrial parks, tourists arrive at the Chinese-upgraded airport and commuters ride modern Chinese trains to work.

Simply put, Addis Ababa is becoming the city that China built — but at what diplomatic and economic cost?

Are you starting to get the picture?

As the western world sleeps, the Chinese are literally taking over an entire continent.

And as they increasingly dominate the landscape economically, they are bringing their culture with them as well…

Chinese influence also goes beyond physical infrastructure. Now it’s possible to pick up a copy of China Daily, China’s state-run newspaper, in some African cities, and watch CCTV, China’s state-run news channel. Some cities have Chinese language schools, and some African students are given grants to go study in China.

Apologists for China could point out that all of this development has pulled millions of Africans out of poverty.

And that is true.

But all of this development also carries with it a very hefty price tag…

China is now Africa’s biggest trade partner, with Sino-African trade topping $200 billion per year. According to McKinsey, over 10,000 Chinese-owned firms are currently operating throughout the African continent, and the value of Chinese business there since 2005 amounts to more than $2 trillion, with $300 billion in investment currently on the table. Africa has also eclipsed Asia as the largest market for China’s overseas construction contracts. To keep this momentum building, Beijing recently announced a $1 billion Belt and Road Africa infrastructure development fund and, in 2018, a whopping $60 billion African aid package, so expect Africa to continuing swaying to the east as economic ties with China become more numerous and robust.

Needless to say, the Chinese are not doing all of this out of the goodness of their hearts. African governments are going very deep into debt in order to afford all of this infrastructure, and several of them are now in way over their heads…

There have already been warning signs: the $4 Addis Ababa-Djibouti Railway ended up costing Ethiopia nearly a quarter of it’s total 2016 budget, Nigeria had to renegotiate a deal with their Chinese contractor due to their failure to pay, and Kenya’s 80% Chinese-financed railway from Mombasa to Nairobi has already gone four times over budget, costing the country upwards of 6% of it’s GDP.

This is the sort of predatory lending that western powers once did so well, but now China has taken things to an entirely new level.

And once China has an African government by the throat, they can be absolutely ruthless…

There have been credible reports of talks between the Zambian government and China on handing over the country’s national electricity company, ZESCO to the Chinese due to the inability of Zambia to meet its loan repayment promises. This is expected as China is already in control of the country’s broadcasting company, ZNBC. There are also fears the main airport in Lusaka could be the next target.

Obliviously, Zambia is in trouble. And for other African beneficiaries of Chinese loans, they should prepare for the same possibility in the eventuality that they aren’t able to repay China.

Basically, Zambia is in the process of becoming totally owned by China.

And this is going to happen in country after country until someone stops them.

But who is going to stop them?

After all, the U.S. is about a trillion dollars in debt to the Chinese at this point.

When it comes to foreign policy, China is playing chess while most of the western powers are playing checkers.

They are literally running circles around us, and we are so clueless that we don’t even understand what is happening.

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

Political demagoguery is a valuable and effective weapon in the arsenal of the establishment elites. As long as there is a wide ideological division between groups in society, biases and desires can be tapped and manipulated.  This allows those in power to direct vast portions of the public down one path or another. When fear of an enemy and the drive to “win” become more important than truth and evidence, the population has tied its own puppet strings and handed them over to the spin doctors.

This is why the false Left/Right paradigm has been so useful to the establishment for so long. Anytime the public starts to wake up to the web of control, all the elites have to do is push one or both sides of the political spectrum towards extremism and let the people rage at each other instead of picking up their torches and pitchforks and tearing down the oligarchy. This method of division and diversion keeps the masses occupied and feeling as though they are accomplishing something while actually accomplishing nothing.

As Carroll Quigley, globalist insider and mentor to Bill Clinton, admitted in his book ‘Tragedy And Hope’:

“The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can “throw the rascals out” at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy….Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies.”

The false Left/Right tactic has become more and more exposed in the past decade to the wider public, and so the elites had to change their methods to adapt to the growing awareness. Conservatives in particular have started to leave the plantation, and something had to be done to drag them back. The liberty movement has become a force in western life with tens of millions of members. It is an unpredictable element that the establishment needs to lock down and redirect if they ever hope to achieve their goal of a “new world order”.

The elites have used two tandem strategies in this effort:

First, they pushed leftist indoctrination towards full bore cultism.

Second, they have attempted to co-opt the leadership of conservatives and the liberty movement using a political puppet figure in order to bottleneck our energy and momentum.

Leftist culture has become increasingly erratic and unhinged (even more so than usual), informed by elements of a new social justice fanaticism; a kind of religious fervor where faith in ideological gatekeepers is more important than facts. The majority of the left, while not necessarily part of this “woke” religion, is still influenced by SJW rhetoric. Delusional notions of “patriarchy” and “inherent racism” and “inherent sexism” are woven into the Democrat mindset today. They see oppression everywhere, and victim group status has become the social currency they use to acclimate to a fantasy world where big government and entitlements are the solutions to all the world’s ills.

The conservative side of civilization doesn’t participate in the oppression fantasies of the left. We don’t even speak the same language, as the left’s very vocabulary has shifted into an academic babble-language they simply made up to describe social dynamics that don’t exist and gender politics that are biologically and scientifically absurd. Reconciling with leftists in any meaningful way has become nearly impossible, and fear of their fanaticism is causing conservatives to assume that whatever these people hate, must be good.

Enter Donald Trump, a kind of artificially created focal point machine, a figure that is designed to absorb liberty movement talking points and then regurgitate them in an alphabet soup puddle on Twitter. This rhetoric is relatively effective in that many conservatives recognize parts of the soup and find comfort that Trump “must be on their side”.

I have outlined in numerous articles Trump’s dubious background and behavior. To summarize, we often hear lip service from Trump on anti-globalism and anti-elitism, even though it is an undeniable fact that he has saturated his cabinet with globalists and elitists.

We heard anti-banker talking points from Trump during his campaign, even though Trump has a longstanding relationship to the Rothschild family and works side-by-side with Rothschild and Goldman Sachs bankers in the White House. We heard lots of anti-Federal Reserve discussion from Trump and observations that the current economy is an explosive bubble engineered by them; yet he now openly demands that the Fed inflate the bubble further while he takes full credit for the fake stock market rally.  We also heard many promises that US troops would be coming home and the long wars in the Middle East would end for America; this has not happened and likely will not happen as tensions with Iran continue to grow.

In other words, Trump is a skin job. A robot. A false conservative and false prophet of the liberty movement. He tells us what we want to hear while his actions say something entirely different. Yet, a lot of conservatives still listen to him, because they despise the collectivist religion of the left, they desperately want mainstream recognition and representation, and because they want to believe that there is a white knight out there in Washington defending their interests and their future.

The establishment understands these desires and exploits them. They understand that the more extreme the left becomes, the more tempted conservatives will be to jump blindly on the Trump bandwagon.

Mainstream media outlets like CNN have taken to referring to Trump’s base as a “cult” recently, which of course is the pot calling the kettle black; but it does not mean that the accusation is wrong. Trump’s base is indeed acting more and more like a cult, but primarily in reaction to the cultism of leftists. The crazier the left gets, the more Trump becomes a folk hero to the right. The more the media promotes fabricated Russiagate nonsense or Ukrainian conspiracy narratives, the more conservatives assume that the establishment is “trying to take down” Trump.

It is rather rudimentary reverse psychology – If the establishment media attacks Trump, then he must be “anti-establishment”. If the leftists hate Trump, then he must be good for conservatives. Nothing could be further from the truth, but if anyone points this out they will be immediately attacked as disinformation agents and purveyors of CNN talking points.

A common argument in defense of Trump is to ignore his associations and behavior entirely and focus on the prevailing circus surrounding him instead. People state indignantly that:

“Trump is under attack! They are trying to impeach him! How can he be working with the globalists if they are trying to get rid of him…?”

I would point out that there is a usefulness to political theater that goes far beyond trying to remove a president from office. Again, the media viciously attacked Trump during his election campaign, but if one understands that public trust in the mainstream media has collapsed in the past ten years, then one also understands that media attacks on Trump would only cause more people to like him and vote for him. The question then needs to be asked: Does the establishment understand this inverse relationship in public psychology? Or, did they completely overlook it?

I seriously doubt they are overlooking it.

If this is the case, then the frothing leftist rage against Trump, while partially real, is also 4th Generation warfare designed to trick conservatives into developing their own cult-like fantasy that Trump is our fearless leader fighting the good fight even though his presidency is tightly intertwined with global elitists. The impeachment itself comes at a time when a large portion of the liberty movement is waking up to the Trump con game and is questioning many of his activities and associations.

The establishment has put a lot of effort into creating the Trump versus Leftist circus, and they really hate the idea that a number of people are refusing to pick a side.  For them, there is nothing worse than free thinkers who organize their own side separate from the false paradigm.

The impeachment, like Russiagate, is not designed to get Trump out of office. It is a Hail Mary attempt to pull liberty minded conservatives back into the Trump fold; to keep us predictable and under control. It is also designed to keep leftists feeling justified in their insanity. Remember, the crazier the left acts, the more fearful and malleable conservatives become.

The establishment likes Trump right where he is, and he will not be going anywhere, at least not until he has completely served his purpose. Whether that will be in the next year, or in another four years, it’s hard to say at this time. Obviously, the elites have to keep the left/right sideshow going at full volume until they are done using Trump as a distraction. They will “attack” him as often as needed to create the illusion that he is anti-establishment, and Trump will continue to play along to please his masters, many of them standing over his shoulder everyday in the White House.

The Leftist Cult and the Trump Cult are similar in their refusal to accept facts and reality, as well as their ability to double and triple down on delusions that are consistently debunked.

I have witnessed people on the Trump-train dismiss every blatant piece of evidence of Trump’s collusion with globalists on the basis that he is “keeping his enemies close”.  I have seen them ignore his support for Red Flag gun laws, his refusal to pull US forces out of Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen, his hostility towards Iran, his support for totalitarian governments like Saudi Arabia, etc.  They call it “4D chess” and simply move on.  I have seen them shrug off endless data showing economic decline and proclaim instead an “economic boom”.  I have seen them completely absorbed and distracted by the trade war and China while forgetting all about the banking elites that engineer most of the calamity in our society.

They act this way because they are afraid.  The political left frightens them, they are searching for a hero to save them, and they are willing to overlook almost any skeleton in Trump’s closet in order to make their fantasy version of him real.  But, the leftists are nothing more than a symptom – They are useful idiots, not the source of the disease.  And, Trump is not the hero conservatives are looking for anyway.  In terms of the liberty movement, Trump is irrelevant.  He’s a footnote.  The real work is being done by millions of activists breaking through decades of propaganda and exposing the truth.

The difference between the Leftist Cult and the Trump Cult is mostly intent: Leftists double and triple down on their lies because they are infatuated with collective power and they see the truth as an obstacle to the “greater good”. The Trump cult ignores facts and evidence on Trump because they are hyperfocused on collective defense. Leftists are seeking to micromanage the thoughts and behavior of the world while conservatives are seeking to solidify enough political protection to ensure they are left alone. The Leftist Cult wants to burn everything to the ground, erase history and rebuild the world in their image. The Trump Cult is trying to keep the last structures of American heritage alive; they have simply put their faith in the wrong champion.

The sad reality is, leftists and conservatives are likely far too alien to each other now to ever come to a diplomatic solution. The division in society is very real; it’s the division at the top that’s Kabuki theater. The liberty movement is the key to everything, as we are the constant target of establishment 4th Gen propaganda. If we didn’t matter, then the elites would not be spending so much time, money and energy trying to keep us in line. They need us to buy into the theater, otherwise we become an unknown element, a third party, a time bomb that could explode unexpectedly on them at any given moment.

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As the decade draws to a close, it’s time to look back at some of the things the past ten years have brought us. To think that people clinking their glasses on New Year Year’s Eve 2009 had no idea what an iPad was and couldn’t post a picture of the fireworks on Instagram.

As Statista’s Felix Richter rightfully points out, it was a different world back then.

You will find more infographics at Statista

While the 2000s will always be remembered as the eve of the smartphone era, the past decade brought us some of the world’s most beloved social media apps as well as several gadgets we wouldn’t want to miss today.

The PlayStation 4, launched in November 2013, went on to become the second best-selling video game console of all time. The Apple Watch (2015) helped wearables reach mainstream adoption and Amazon’s Echo rang in the smart speaker boom in 2014.

As for the next decade, we have no idea what to expect. 5G will surely be a big topic for the early 2020s and rumors suggest that augmented reality headsets could become a thing. With several technology companies among the world’s most valuable (not to mention most resourceful) corporations right now, it seems safe to say that the next decade won’t disappoint from a technological point of view.

Authored by Larry Johnson via Sic Temper ZTyrannis blog,

Many of the critical tools employed in the coup to paint Donald Trump as a tool of the Russians and to manufacture a pretext for removing him from office, were created more than twenty years ago.

I am talking about the surveillance state that the American electorate has ignorantly accepted as necessary in order to keep us safe from terrorists.

Despite previous warning from whistleblowers like Russ Tice, Bill Binney, Ed Loomis and Kird Wiebe, no action to rein in the surveillance monster was taken until Edward Snowden absconded with the documents exposing the vast amount spying that the U.S. Government is doing to its own citizens. But even those weak efforts to supposedly rein in the NSA proved to be nothing more than mere window dressing.

The spying got worse. Just ask Donald Trump and the members of his campaign that were targeted first by the CIA and NSA and then by the FBI. Fundamental civil rights were trampled.

The real irony in all of this is that Barack Obama, as President, took credit for helping revise the laws in order to prevent the spying exposed by Edward Snowden. But under the Obama Administration, spying on political opponents–both real and perceived–escalated. We know for a fact that journalists, such as James Rosen and Sheryl Atkinson, were targets and their communications and computers attacked by the U.S. Government.

We know, thanks to a memo released by Judge Rosemary Collyer, that “FBI consultants” were making illegal searches of NSA material using the names of Donald Trump, his family and members of his campaign staff.

Some of this NSA material came courtesy of the Brits and their collection on U.S. targets. Some of this material came from the NSA’s own collection and storage of all electronic communications and was obtained using a nifty NSA tool called XKEYSCORE. Listen to Ed Snowden’s description. Also, take time to appreciate the irony that CNN and other journalists were actually trying to report real news. Now they are full blown apologists for the abuse of the intelligence collection tools.

Six years ago, former NSA Technical Director for Military and Geopolitical Issues, Bill Binney, and Russ Tice, a former NSA analyst, appeared on the PBS News Hour. Once again, they make very clear the enormous nature to the threat to our civil liberties.

Too bad Donald Trump did not listen to their warning.

Given the robust, wide ranging ability of the NSA to probe all communications by any person in the United States, it is remarkable that no real dirt on Donald Trump was ever uncovered. Had such information existed, it would be in the NSA’s storage vaults in Utah and crooked CIA analysts under Brennan’s direction would have found it and used it. But that did not happed. The best the intel folks could fabricate were the salacious claims attributed to reports ostensibly created by former British spy, Christopher Steele. Turns out that the titillating account that Trump hired hookers to perform coprophilia (could of been worse, coprophagia) was nothing more than idle bar talk.

What has happened to Donald Trump can happen to any of us. It is time to take this threat seriously and put the intel agencies back into a properly monitored corral. Otherwise, we will lose this Republic.

For 2020, Americans are making the resolution to adopt healthy habits – concerning their finances as well as their bodies. A survey by Ipsos for Urban Plates has found that out of all participants who said they were making one or several new year’s resolutions, 51 percent wanted to manage their finances better and an equal amount wanted to adopt healthier eating habits.

As Statista’s Katharina Bucxhholz notes, more popular resolutions for the upcoming year also circled around improving one’s health, with a more active lifestyle and weight loss being favorite answers.

You will find more infographics at Statista

38 percent of participants wanted to improve their mental well-being or practice mindfulness, a sign of a growing awareness for these aspects of mental health. Despite environmental protection being an equally popular topic at the moment, only 22 percent of survey participants said they wanted to be more eco-friendly in 2020.

18 percent of Americans said they were making only one resolution, while an additional 20 percent said they would make more than one. The percentage of resolution-makers was highest among Hispanics. A total of 56 percent in that group said they were making one or more resolutions.

Authored by Lawrence Sellin via The Modern War Institute,

If a recent article published by the Modern War Institute at West Point, “Don’t Let Kabul 2020 Look Like Saigon 1975: The Dangers of a Precipitous Afghanistan Withdrawal,” represents the prevailing American views on military strategy, then it goes a long way to explain why the United States lost the Afghanistan War.

The authors did get the premise right concerning the dangers associated with a precipitous withdrawal, but by getting all the basics wrong, they offer all the wrong solutions.

The article begins with a whopper, that “a US/NATO military withdrawal must be managed responsibly to conserve the hard-earned gains on issues like civil liberties and women’s rights made over the past eighteen years.”

No. Anyone who has spent any time in Afghanistan beyond the confines of a headquarters or a walled-in facility would know that is a not a valid reason to maintain a military presence in Afghanistan because it is simply not something within our capability either to establish or sustain.

A proper exit strategy is a process of burden shifting in a manner that protects vital US interests, while preventing US adversaries from unduly benefitting from a withdrawal.

Just like military leaders and policymakers over nearly two decades and through multiple administrations, the authors fail to address or even identify the true nature of the war in Afghanistan.

From that omission arises all the misinterpretations of the present situation and the mistaken prescriptions for the future—most notably, the recommendation for continued nation building.

The time is long overdue for a reality check.

First, the conflict in Afghanistan is not an insurgency. It is a proxy war being waged by Pakistan against Afghanistan and the United States. It is similar to Pakistan’s use of terrorist proxies against India in Kashmir.

Pakistan has always viewed Afghanistan as a client state and a security buffer against what it considers potential Indian encirclement and as a springboard to extend its own influence into the resource-rich areas of Central Asia.

The American counterinsurgency strategy was never winnable as long as Pakistan largely controlled the supply of our troops in landlocked Afghanistan and regulated the operational tempo through its proxy army, the Taliban, which has maintained an extensive recruiting, training, and financial support infrastructure inside Pakistan, all of which has been immune to attack.

Second, Pakistan has never been an ally of the United States, but a duplicitous partner, pursuing its own interests in coordination with its true ally, China, while being generously funded by us.

Nowhere have Chinese ambitions been more clearly and publicly articulated than in a June 2018 China Daily article by former Pakistani diplomat, Zamir Ahmed Awan, who works for the Beijing-controlled Center for China and Globalization [comments added].

New [Chinese] initiatives for peace in Afghanistan are welcome, and may change the scenario in the whole region. . . . I believe, American think tanks and leadership, especially military leadership has already realized that this war cannot be won. The only option is withdrawal, the sooner the better.

Pakistan can play a vital role in a sustainable solution to the Afghan conflict [controlling Afghanistan as a client state]. Complete withdrawal and an Afghan-led [Taliban-led] solution is the only permanent way out. Pakistan can facilitate an honorable and safe passage for US withdrawal.

Peace in Afghanistan will allow economic activity between Central Asia, Russia, China, and the Arabian Sea. . . . It can change the fate of the whole region. Chinese projects like the Belt and Road Initiative and the objectives of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization [SCO]. . . . At the recent SCO summit, the Afghanistan president was invited as a guest and observer. Hopefully, the country will soon join SCO. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor may also be extended to benefit Afghanistan in the near future if there is peace.

Since that article was published, China has offered to extend CPEC to Afghanistan; China will build a military facility in and deploy Chinese troops to Afghanistan; Afghan military personnel will be trained in China; and members of the Afghan Parliament have recommended that the Bilateral Security Agreement between the United States and Afghanistan be canceled, presumably to be replaced closer security ties with by China.

Ultimately, America’s most formidable adversary in South Asia will be China, on which future US strategic planning should focus.

China seeks global domination. One vehicle to achieve it is the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a collection of infrastructure projects and a network of commercial agreements in 152 countries designed to link the entire world directly to the Chinese economy through interconnected land-based and maritime routes.

One element of BRI is the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), an infrastructure and development project, the backbone of which is a transportation network connecting China to the Pakistani seaports of Gwadar and Karachi located on the Arabian Sea

The guarantor of that soft power approach is the hard power of Chinese military expansion.

China plans to establish a naval and air bases on the Arabian Sea within easy reach of the strategically important Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. That military facility will complement China’s already operational naval base in Djibouti, located at another strategic chokepoint, the entrance to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal.

With or without US approval or participation, China intends to incorporate Afghanistan into CPEC and exploit the estimated $3 trillion in untapped Afghan mineral resources.

The wild card in that scenario is Islamist extremism, of which Pakistan, not Afghanistan, is the true epicentre.

Islamist militancy has long been an element of Pakistan’s foreign and domestic policies. Any threat by these groups to Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is, therefore, largely self-created.

As early as the 1950s, Pakistan began inserting Islamists associated with its Jamaat-e-Islami party into Afghanistan.

In 1974, then Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto set up a cell within Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) to begin managing dissident Islamists in Afghanistan.

Under President Zia ul-Haq (1977–1988), Pakistan pursued a policy of aggressive “Islamization” with the proliferation of religious schools and religious political parties, resulting in a society that became ever more extreme and intolerant. Ethnic separatism was suppressed and Islamist fighters were found to be useful proxies for the Pakistani military.

One source of America’s current dilemma in Afghanistan was a failure by the Reagan administration in allowing the Central Intelligence Agency to blindly outsource mujahideen funding to Pakistan’s ISI, which funneled American money and arms not to Afghan nationalists like Ahmad Shah Massoud, but to pro-Pakistani Islamists such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani.

It is an undisputed fact that the Taliban were created by the ISI, beginning in 1994, as a means of intervening in the Afghan civil war to influence the outcome in favor of Pakistani national interests.

Since its founding, the ISI and the Pakistani military have never stopped providing financial, logistical, and military support to the Taliban. The subterfuge underlying Pakistani policy was already apparent in the early days of the Afghanistan war.

The tens of thousands of madrasas, many unofficial, have offered a fertile recruiting source, not just for the Taliban, but for other Pakistan-based militant groups, such as Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba, responsible for attacks against India.

Contrary to the suggestion by the authors, it would be foolhardy to pump ever more international financial support into the region, funding largely supplied by the United States, an approach that would only benefit our adversaries.

Quite the opposite is needed. Financial pressure should be brought to bear on Pakistan for its continued support of terrorism and steps should be taken to thwart Chinese economic and military expansion in the region, including closer cooperation with India.

The only bargaining chip the United States has in peace negotiations is our presence in Afghanistan. The “presence” argument is clearly unsustainable. Between now and the beginning of a withdrawal, the United States should be identifying new forms of leverage, in the short term, to bolster our negotiating position, and, in the long term, as a basis of a new South Asian strategy.

Among the dumbest of the state of California’s new ‘woke’ legislation for 2020 is that it’s set to ban all public and charter schools from suspending students for ‘willful defiance’ in this upcoming year: 

A California bill that passed the Legislature would prohibit schools, including charter schools, from suspending students for willful defiance.

That means if a student is acting up in class, teachers and school officials will not be able to suspend them from school.

As if California public schools weren’t already woefully behind national education standards, despite the state pouring $90 billion into the system this year alone, schools will now be forced to keep kids on campus no matter their level of constant defiance and disruption to the educational process of others.

Under the law, SB 419, the only exception for which a student could still be suspended suspended will be for bringing a weapon or illegal drugs to school.

And what’s the rationale? Because of course, racism. 

As a local NBC affiliate reported earlier when the bill was passed by the state House and Senate:

The bill by Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, would ban the suspension of students in grades K-8 for refusing to obey a teacher or administrator, a practice known as willful defiance.

“I’ve dealt with a lot of these cases,” said Berry Accius, founder of Voice of the Youth, a nonprofit mentoring program in Sacramento. “Unfortunately, I’ve had kids that have been suspended for sometimes three months.”

Accius said school suspensions are used disproportionately against students of color.

“African American males and females, they are suspended at a higher rate — especially the African American males,” Accius said.

No doubt the jobs of California school teachers and administrators just got immensely harder. It will take effect starting July 1, 2020.

Commenting at The American Conservative, Rod Dreher skewers the initiative and predicts the following outcome: “Now state legislators, in their wisdom, have condemned elementary school teachers and the well-behaved students — black, white, Latino, Asian, whatever — to the tyranny of brats.”

And more: “Progressives are dismantling the ability of a basic social institution — the school — to defend itself, and to maintain order sufficient to fulfill its function.” Further, Dreher notes the inevitability that “when the parents who can afford to get their kids out of the public schools do so, progressives will call them racist.”

* * * 

Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

Political correctness recently took a dangerous turn in the United Kingdom when the North Bristol National Health Service Trust announced that hospital patients who use offensive, racist, or sexist language will cease receiving medical care as soon as it is safe to end their treatment.

The condition that treatment will not be withdrawn until doing so is safe seems to imply that no one will actually suffer from this policy. However, health-care providers have great discretion to determine when it is “safe” to withhold treatment. So, patients could be left with chronic pain or be denied certain procedures that could improve their health but are not necessary to make them “safe.” Patients accused of racism or sexism could also find themselves at the bottom of the NHS’s infamous “waiting lists,” unable to receive treatment until it truly is a matter of life and death.

Since many people define racism and sexism as “anything I disagree with,” the new policy will no doubt lead to people being denied medical care for statements that most reasonable people would consider unobjectionable.

This is not the first time NHS has withheld treatment because of an individual’s behavior. A couple years ago, another local health committee announced it would withhold routine or nonemergency surgeries from smokers and the obese. Since reducing smoking and obesity benefits both individual patients and the health care system as a whole, this policy may appear defensible. But denying or delaying care violates medical ethics and sets a dangerous precedent. If treatment could be denied to smokers and the obese, then it could also be denied to those who engage in promiscuous sex, drive over the speed limit, don’t get the “proper” number of vaccinations for themselves and their children, or have “dangerous” political views.

Government bureaucrats denying care to individuals for arbitrary reasons is the inevitable result of government interference in the health-care market. Government intervention is supposed to ensure quality and affordable (or free) care for all. But, government intervention artificially lowers the costs of health care to patients while increasing costs to providers. As demand rises and supply falls, government imposes rationing to address the shortages and other problems caused by prior government interference.

Rationing has been part of American health care at least since the passage of the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973. Every plan to expand government’s role in health care contains some form of rationing.

Advocates for government intervention in health care will counter complaints about rationing by saying the related health-care decisions are being made to benefit people’s quality of life. But, claiming government officials know how medical treatment can best enhance quality of life is as absurd as claiming that government officials know the correct prices of automobiles.

The only way to reverse the slide into national health care and rationing is for those who understand the economic and moral case for liberty to keep pushing to replace Obamacare and all other government intrusions into health care. Government-controlled health care must be replaced by free-market health care that empowers individuals to determine for themselves what does and does not enhance their quality of life.