In “Message To Tehran” Iraqi Protesters Torch Another Iranian Consulate
The month of protest mayhem has continued in Iraq, on Wednesday once again escalating into attacks on Iranian and pro-Iranian bases and sites, especially in the restive southern provinces, where Tehran’s proxies in Iraq are considered strongest.
Reuters reports, “Iraqi protesters stormed and set fire to the Iranian consulate in the southern city of Najaf on Wednesday, police and civil defense sources said.”
Consular staff had reportedly evacuated as mobs of angry demonstrators gathered prior to the incident, which involved Iraqis storming the compound and breaching the gates. Amass blaze then erupted from within during the evening hours as social media videos quickly put online show.
It marks the second such mob attack on an Iranian diplomatic compound in under a month, after the Iranian consulate in the southern Shia holy city of Karbala came under attack and was torched on Nov. 3.
Iraq remains a sectarian powder keg waiting to erupt further, given anti-corruption protests have quickly turned to target neighboring Iran’s influence.
Humanitarian monitors have counted hundreds dead among the protests which have raged for over a month, with most international media citing over 300 killed and many thousands wounded.
Iran-backed Iraqi Shia militias have reportedly been increasingly involved in assisting security forces in putting down the popular unrest which has swept the country – by some accounts even deploying snipers.
This has increased fears that the even larger, but on the whole much more peaceful ongoing protests in nearby Lebanon could also soon become armed and sectarian just in Iraq.
Iranian consulate in Najaf burning overnight Wednesday, via Reuters.
Kurdistan-24 journalist Barzan Sadiq described the consular attacks this month as a “Bright message to Tehran and its proxies in Iraq.”
A recent article in the Financial Times, “Abenomics provides a lesson for the rich world“, mentioned that the experiment started by prime minister Shinzo Abe in the early 2010s should serve as an important warning for rich countries. Unfortunately, the article’s “lessons” were rather disappointing. These were mainly that the central bank can do a lot more than the ECB and the Fed are doing, and that Japan is not doing so badly. I disagree.
The failure of Abenomics has been phenomenal. The balance sheet of the central bank of Japan has ballooned to more than 100% of the country’s GDP, the central bank owns almost 70% of the country’s ETFs and is one of the top 10 shareholders in the majority of the largest companies of the Nikkei index. Government debt to GDP has swelled to 236%, and despite the record-low cost of debt, the government spends almost 22% of the budget on interest expenses. All of this to achieve what?
None of the results that were expected from the massive monetary experiment, inventively called QQE (quantitative and qualitative easing) have been achieved, even remotely. Growth is expected to be one of the weakest in the world in 2020, according to the IMF, and the country has consistently missed both its inflation and economic growth targets, while the balance sheet of the central banks and the country’s debt soared.
Real wages have been stagnant for years, and economic activity continues to be as poor as it was in the previous two decades of constant stimulus.
The main lessons that global economies should learn from Japan are the following:
No country can offset the problem of demographics and productivity with higher debt and money printing. It simply kicks the can further but leaves the economy weaker and in permanent stagnation.
The technology and productivity challenges cannot be solved incentivizing malinvestment and government spending. It is a massive constant transfer of wealth from the productive to the unproductive, which makes high productivity sectors stall and crony and obsolete sectors remain zombified.
Doing the same with different names will not generate a different outcome. Calling the same policy something different will not make citizens get excited about the economy.
The wrong diagnosis will lead to worsening outcomes. When the government is surrounded by economists that tell them that the problem of the economy is that there are too many savings, the government will decide to raise taxes and create a larger problem attacking consumption. With private debt at 221% of GDP. Japan has many issues, none of them being a “savings glut”.
If you abandon structural reforms, the results will be worse. The QQE program was based on three “arrows”: monetary policy, government spending, and structural reforms. Guess which arrow they forgot to implement? Exactly. Structural reforms never happened, and when they did, they came in the form of higher taxes and more interventionism, the opposite of what the economy needed.
The biggest lesson from Japan is not that the central bank can buy equities and keep kicking the can further. The biggest lesson from Japan is that monetary and fiscal policy is not designed to kickstart the economy and improve growth or productivity but to perpetuate the imbalances created by excessive government intervention and transfer wealth from salaries and savings to the government and the indebted crony sectors.
The lesson from Japan is that no government can make two plus two equal twenty-two, but they can prolong budget imbalances for much longer than logic would dictate.
The true lesson from Japan is that central planners will continue to prefer to gradually nationalize the economy before even considering a moderate reduction in government size and control of the economy. The result will be almost no growth, poor productivity, and rising discontent, but the bureaucratic machine will be safe.
California DMV Rakes In $50 Million Per Year Selling Personal Information
The California DMV has been selling the personal information of registered drivers to the tune of $50 million per year, according to a DMV document obtained by Motherboard.
In a previous investigation, Motherboard found DMVs in other states have been selling non-optional information drivers must provide in order to obtain a license, such as names, physical addresses and car registration information.
And while California didn’t disclose exactly who they’re selling to, other states were making a handy profit from customers which include data broker LexisNexis, Experian, private investigators and others.
In a public record acts request, Motherboard asked the California DMV for the total dollar amounts paid by commercial requesters of data for the past six years. The responsive document shows the total revenue in financial year 2013/14 as $41,562,735, before steadily climbing to $52,048,236 in the financial year 2017/18. –Motherboard
The California DMV told Motherboard that requestors may include insurance companies, vehicle manufacturers and prospective employers.
When asked if the DMV relied on this revenue, public information officer Marty Greenstein wrote that the revenue is applied to highway and public safety “including availability of insurance, risk assessment, vehicle safety recalls, traffic studies, emissions research, background checks, and for pre- and existing employment purposes.”
“The DMV takes its obligation to protect personal information very seriously. Information is only released pursuant to legislative direction, and the DMV continues to review its release practices to ensure information is only released to authorized persons/entities and only for authorized purposes. The DMV also audits requesters to ensure proper audit logs are maintained and that employees are trained in the protection of DMV information and anyone having access to this information sign a security document,” he added.
So, who exactly is California selling drivers’ non-optional information to?
Democratic representatives should think twice before they vote to impeach President Trump.
I thought I had said all I was going to say on “Ukrainegate” in my article “Make the Truth Irrelevant.” Then I read a column on the Internet by Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan whose very title: “Trump’s Defenders Have No Defense” (WSJ, 11/21/19) bespeaks its idiocy. Unfortunately, it also represents a lot of what’s being peddled by the mainstream media.
How would Noonan or anyone else outside Trump’s circle know whether he does or does not have a defense when the rules of the only body that has pursued the case against him preclude him from offering a defense? In the House impeachment hearings, Trump’s defenders cannot call their own witnesses, cannot confront the whistleblower whose complaint launched the case, cannot challenge hearsay evidence and have it excluded, and cannot probe the motives or possibly illegal behavior of his accusers.
Noonan further embarrasses herself with the following: “As to the impeachment itself, the case has been so clearly made you wonder what exactly the Senate will be left doing. How will they hold a lengthy trial with a case this clear?” She reveals her own ignorance of the law and facts of this particular case, and complete lack of decency or sense of fair play, rendering such a judgment after hearing only one side of the case.
Noonan has prompted this analysis of possibilities concerning Trump’s defense in a Senate trial. It assumes that standard American judicial rules, procedures, and principles will be in force during the trial.
Disclaimer: I am a lawyer, but I am an inactive member of the California Bar Association and have never practiced law.
The best case for a defense attorney is one in which the attorney can say: Assume what the prosecution is saying is true, my client has not broken the law or committed a crime. During his phone call with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, President Trump asked for investigations of three matters, but he did not explicitly link receipt of US aid that had been held up to Zelensky conducting those investigations. Suppose, for argument’s sake, that he had either explicitly asked for that quid pro quo or that Zelensky could reasonably infer he was asking for such a quid pro quo. Trump’s first line of defense would be to challenge the ubiquitous characterization—at least among Democrats and the media―of such a link as a crime.
According to the transcript of the call, Trump asked Zelensky to look into the company Crowdstrike, which has been the only entity allowed to examine the DNC servers that were allegedly hacked by the Russians. In a related query, he eluded to possible Ukrainian involvement in initiating the Russiagate fiasco. Later in the phone call, he said: “There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… It sounds horrible to me.”
Assume for argument’s sake that Trump was holding up aid to get Zelensky to investigate Crowdstrike, possible initiation of Russiagate, and the Bidens. Nobody is calling the first two requests illegal because investigations would not directly redound to Trump’s political benefit (but might well redound to his accusers’ political detriment, see below). Only the third request, if receipt of aid was conditioned on compliance, has been termed illegal, because it could harm Trump’s political opponent, Joe Biden, and presumably benefit Trump.
What if the subject of that third request was not Biden and son, but rather some nonpolitical but prominent US figure and son, the investigation of whom would yield no political benefit to Trump? The president would have a strong argument that there was a prima facie (literally translated as “at first face” or “at first appearance”) case of corruption against the nonpolitical figure and his son. He could assert that he had a duty as the chief executive of the laws of the US to launch a US investigation, and to press—because so much of the alleged corruption happened in Ukraine and involved Ukrainian citizens, companies, government bodies, and other entities—the Ukrainian president to launch an investigation. The US and Ukraine have a treaty, Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters ratified by the Senate in 2000 and signed by Bill Clinton. Trump could argue that under that treaty he would be well within his powers to ask for such an investigation. He could cite a letter Clinton sent to the Senate recommending passage of the treaty, which lists a number of ways assistance can be rendered, with a final catch-all for “any other form of assistance not prohibited by the laws of the requested state.”
If Trump then explicitly tied US financial and military assistance meant for Ukraine to President Zelensky initiating that investigation against the nonpolitical father and son, no one would bat an eye. In fact, many would commend Trump for applying that leverage. US foreign aid has often had explicit provisions about reducing corruption as a condition of the recipient country receiving the aid. A US president informally linking the two would be a nonevent.
It only became an event because the figures to be investigated were Joe and Hunter Biden. Here the proper question for Trump to ask is: So what? Yes, Trump might benefit politically from such an investigation, prosecutors and politicians often benefit politically from prosecutions, but does that exempt the Bidens from investigation of what are at least prima facie instances of possible corruption? Implicit in the Democrats’ case against Trump is the placement of the Bidens above the laws that would apply to anyone else (except perhaps other favored political figures).
If the prosecution in the Trump impeachment trial wants to contest that characterization and conclusion, then Trump’s defense should insist on calling father and son as witnesses to explain and be cross-examined. How does Hunter’s dealings with Burisma not make out prima facie corruption? How does Joe’s insistence that the prosecutor who was investigating Burisma be fired, and his threat to put a hold on foreign aid to Ukraine not make out prima facie corruption? Hunter, Joe, and their defenders can explain why there should have been no Ukranian investigation, and why Trump should not have used all the leverage he had, including putting a hold on aid—just as Joe Biden threatened to do (and bragged about in a speech before the Council on Foreign Relations) to get the prosecutor fired—to prompt Ukraine to launch such an investigation.
If what Trump did is a crime, so too is what Joe Biden did. However, because Biden publicly bragged about what he did, proving Biden’s criminal culpability would be far easier than proving Trump’s.
It may be news to Peggy Noonan, but unlike in the House proceedings, in the Senate Trump will be able to avail himself of two bulwarks of the American legal system: the Sixth Amendment and the hearsay exclusion. The Sixth Amendment protects defendants’ rights, “to be confronted with the witnesses against him;” and “to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor.”
The hearsay exclusion bars “testimony in court of a statement made out of the court, the statement being offered as an assertion to show the truth of matters asserted therein, and thus resting for its value upon the credibility of the out-of-court asserter.” Mutyambizi v. State, 33 Md.App. 55, 363 A.2d 511, 518. Hearsay is “evidence not proceeding from from the personal knowledge of the witness, but from the mere repetition of what he heard others say. That which does not derive its value solely from the credit of the witness, but rests mainly on the veracity and competency of other persons. The very nature of the evidence shows its weakness, and it is admitted only in specified cases from necessity.”Black’s Law Dictionary, 5th Edition, 1979, West Publishing Co. The 6th Amendment and the hearsay exclusion are related, they both embody fundamental fairness by recognizing a defendant’s right to confront and cross-examine witnesses against him.
While Adam Schiff was able to keep the whistleblower whose memorandum initiated the House’s impeachment investigation from testifying, such protection would not be available in the Senate trial. Trump has the right to confront his accusers. There are allegations that Schiff and members of his staff conferred with the whistleblower before the memorandum was publicly disclosed. Trump’s defense team could argue that Schiff, by conferring with the whistleblower and leading the House impeachment investigation, was also an accuser within the meaning of the 6th Amendment. If that argument prevailed, Schiff would have to testify and be cross-examined. Who knows where that might lead.
Trump would also have the 6th Amendment right to call friendly witnesses, not just to dispute the particulars of his alleged criminal conduct, but to challenge the credibility of adverse witnesses. Again, who knows where that might lead.
Trump would also contest the whistleblower’s testimony, and the testimony from many of the witnesses who appeared in the House proceedings, as hearsay. There is no doubt that the testimony is hearsay, so it would have to be admitted under one of the hearsay exclusion’s exceptions, which would be problematic. Even if it was admitted, the witnesses would be subject to cross-examination, and that didn’t always go so well for Schiff and company in the House. Noonan cited Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland’s testimony concerning the alleged quid pro quothat, “everyone was in the loop, it was no secret.” She said his testimony “was kind of the whole ballgame.” Watch Republican Representative Mike Turner’s shred that testimony.
Perhaps Noonan didn’t see that video.
The one item of evidence that’s clearly admissible is the transcript of Trump’s call with President Zelensky. The authors of that transcript would be available to testify as to its authenticity, which means it fits within a hearsay exception. It’s also conceivable that Zelensky, Trump, or both could testify as to the subject matter, tenor, and tone of their conversation.
The transcript contains no explicit mention of a quid pro quo.Both Trump and Zelensky deny a quid pro quo. If the hearsay presented in the House and the whistleblower’s hearsay are barred in the Senate, it would severely weaken the prosecution’s case. It may be news to Peggy Noonan, but the prosecution has the burden of proof (although it’s unclear if the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard would apply). Without the hearsay, the prosecution won’t have much in the way of proof, and there is evidence that arguably tends to exonerate Trump. Supporting the two presidents’ assertions of no quid pro quo, Zelensky has not initiated an investigation of the Bidens, and Trump did eventually release the aid to Ukraine, although he may have been prompted to do so by the House, which was set to override his hold and release the aid.
In a conventional criminal case, the defendant can attack the integrity, impartiality, and conduct of the prosecution. If Trump is allowed to do so, he would have two strong lines of attack. Noonan approves of “the sober testimony from respectable diplomats,” who made it “clear in a new and public way that pretty much everyone around the president has been forced for three years to work around his poor judgment and unpredictability in order to do their jobs.” Whether that’s true or not, what is such testimony even doing in an impeachment investigation? Trump’s managerial style, and more importantly, his publicly expressed skepticism concerning some of the policies championed by “respectable diplomats” cannot be considered “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors” (Article II, Section 4, US Constitution). Trump could object to such testimony on grounds of relevancy and argue that his accusers were trying to criminalize differences in policy and perceived shortcomings in his personal style.
Trump’s other line of attack would be to illuminate the Democrats’ many questionable ties to Ukraine, and argue that the real aim of their impeachment effort is to prevent him from possibly exposing and jeopardizing those ties.
Ostensibly, Ukraine is a minefield for Democrats. In 2014, the US sponsored a coup against Ukraine’s duly elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, who had aligned the country with Russia rather than the EU. That coup has not worked out well for the US. Russia quickly annexed Crimea, which had been part of Ukraine, and has aided a eastern Ukrainian separatist movement that favors Russia and bitterly resents the coup.
The puppet Ukraine government has been a corrupt money pit for Western aid, loans, and loan guarantees, featuring, among many questionable characters, a coterie that reveres Nazi Germany and the role it played in World War II. The Ukrainian government is a loser, but it’s our loser and Trump has doubled down on Obama’s failure, backing monetary aid and weapons shipments to the beleaguered nation.
Russiagate was launched by Ukrainian officials who disseminated rumors in 2016 that Trump was in league with Russia and later, openly questioned his suitability for the presidency. The DNC dispatched a contractor, Alexandra Chalupa, to Ukraine to search for compromising material on Paul Manafort, then Trump’s campaign chairman. In other words, the Democrats sought information from a foreign power to influence the 2016 election, precisely what they groundlessly accuse Trump of doing.
The reason the Democrats have repeated “quid pro quo”over and over is because that’s the one narrow point they can focus on without their Ukrainian shenanigans blowing up in their faces. Trump mentioned CrowdStrike and the possible Ukrainian initiation of the fruitless Russiagate investigation in his call with Zelensky. As the above-cited SLL article makes clear, those are two issues the Democrats definitely want to avoid, and they’re trying mightily to separate the issue of the supposed quid pro quofrom the linked issue of Biden father and son’s possible corruption. The Trump defense team should pound the table on the Democrats’ odiferous involvement with Ukraine.
Impeachment is always a political process. Ultimately, legal considerations will be secondary to politics. However, the Democrats’ political strategy appears as flawed as their legal tactics. Assuming the House votes for impeachment, the case moves from the forum they controlled to the Senate, which the Republicans control. Never underestimate the cowardice of Republican politicians, but they cannot afford to roll on this one, given Trump’s popularity within the party’s rank and file. House Republicans voted unanimously against the impeachment proceedings. Any Republican voting in favor would have risked almost certain defeat in the next election. Republican Senators perceived as not giving Trump a fair trail, or who vote to convict, will suffer political backlash, especially those Senators up for reelection in the next election.
At the very least, Trump should be able to exercise all the rights afforded defendants in criminal trails. I have suggested ways he can avail himself of those rights, and he can hire attorneys who are far smarter and more experienced than I am. His team can mount a strong defense. Although the mainstream media will be solidly against him, and their commentary will undoubtedly be biased and tendentious, there will be wall-to-wall television coverage and thousands of YouTube videos, so people can see for themselves what transpires.
Those optics—to use a beloved Washington and media word—could well bolster support for Trump and hurt the Democrats. The Republicans may want to drag his trial out as long as possible. If his defense is effective and the Senate votes not to convict, the Democrats will have given him the last word as the House impeachment hearings fade from memory. He will have a golden campaign issue to rally his base and the Democrats will be even more discredited than they were after the Mueller report (with everyone but there own rabid base).
Trump’s defenders have a solid defense if they’re given a fair chance to present it in a forum governed by the standard precepts of American law. If Peggy Noonan’s column represents what the Wall Street Journal considers informed thought and commentary, I’m glad I cancelled my subscription long ago.
… it appears the president was confident enough that a collapse in trade talks won’t drag stocks too far down, and moments after futures reopened at 6pm, the White House said that Trump had signed the Hong Kong bill backing pro-democracy protesters, defying China and making sure that every trader’s Thanksgiving holiday was just ruined.
In a late Wednesday statement from the White House, Trump said that:
I signed these bills out of respect for President Xi, China, and the people of Hong Kong. They are being enacted in the hope that Leaders and Representatives of China and Hong Kong will be able to amicably settle their differences leading to long term peace and prosperity for all.
Needless to say, no differences will be “settled amicably” and now China will have no choice but to retaliate, aggressively straining relations with the US, and further complicating Trump’s effort to wind down his nearly two-year old trade war with Beijing.
The legislation, S. 1838, which was passed virtually unanimously in both chambers, requires annual reviews of Hong Kong’s special trade status under American law – and sanctions against any officials deemed responsible for human rights abuses or undermining the city’s autonomy. The House cleared the bill 417-1 on Nov. 20 after the Senate passed it without opposition, veto-proof majorities that left Trump with little choice but to acquiesce, or else suffer bruising fallout from his own party. the GOP.
While many members of Congress in both parties have voiced strong support for protesters demanding more autonomy for the city, Trump had stayed largely silent, even as the demonstrations have been met by rising police violence.
Until now.
In the days leading up to Trump’s signature, China’s foreign ministry had urged Trump to prevent the legislation from becoming law, warning the Americans not to underestimate China’s determination to defend its “sovereignty, security and development interests.”
“If the U.S. insists on going down this wrong path, China will take strong countermeasures,” said China’s foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang at a briefing Thursday in Beijing. On Monday, China’s Vice Foreign Minister Zheng Zeguang summoned the U.S. ambassador, Terry Branstad to express “strong opposition” to what the country’s government considers American interference in the protests, including the legislation, according to statement.
The new U.S. law comes just as Washington and Beijing showed signs of working toward “phase-one” of deal to ease the trade war. Trump would like the agreement finished in order to ease economic uncertainty for his re-election campaign in 2020, and has floated the possibility of signing the deal in a farm state as an acknowledgment of the constituency that’s borne the brunt of retaliatory Chinese tariffs.
Last week China’s Vice Premier and chief trade negotiator Liu He said before a speech at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Beijing, that he was “cautiously optimistic” about reaching the phase one accord. He will now have no choice but to amend his statement.
In anticipation of a stern Chinese rebuke, US equity futures tumbled, wiping out most of the previous day’s gains…
… while the yuan slumped over 100 pips in kneejerk response.
Still, the generally modest pullback – the S&P was below 2,900 when Trump announced the Phase 1 deal on Oct 11 – suggests that despite Trump’s signature, markets expect a Chinese deal to still come through. That may be an aggressive and overly “hopeful” assumption, especially now that China now longer has a carte blanche to do whatever it wants in Hong Kong, especially in the aftermath of this weekend’s landslide victory for pro-Democracy candidates.
Iran Says Over 700 Banks Were Torched In Vast Protest ‘Conspiracy’
After early in the week Iran’s top elite Guard commander gave a fiery ‘victory’ speech declaring the mainstay of anti-government protests which gripped major cities across Iran since Nov. 15 had been quelled, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has followed up with denouncing the unrest as a “very dangerous conspiracy”.
This as according to Reuters Iranian authorities “reported about 731 banks and 140 government sites had been torched in the disturbances.”
Given the over week-long and government ordered total internet shutdown which had ensued, this claim can’t be independently verified. However, during the opening days of widespread unrest which had been triggered by a sudden fuel price hike by as much as 300% in some places when government subsidies were slashed, initial videos posted online showed dramatic scenes of banks and gas stations being torched.
“A deep, vast and very dangerous conspiracy that a lot of money had been spent on… was destroyed by the people,” Khamenei said while addressing members of the paramilitary Basij force. The Basij were among the elite security forces which spearheaded the crackdown against protests.
Over the past days sizable pro-government demonstrations have largely supplanted the anti-government unrest, which state media has touted as proof the “conspiracy” against the Islamic Republic has failed.
On Monday Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander Gen. Hossein Salami blamed the US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel for fueling the unrest as part of continued covert war against Iran. “If you cross our red lines, we will destroy you,” he threatened.
ISNA via AP: Protesters burned a gas station in protest over raised fuel prices in Tehran on Nov. 17, 2019.
And it was Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli who gave the total alleged figure of 731 banks and 140 government sites being set on fire during the protests.
He also claimed that 50 bases used by police and security forces were attacked along with about 70 gas stations burned, according to the official IRNA news agency.
Burned bank in Tehran, via Reuters.
Few details or locations were given to support this claim, but it is part of the government’s continued attempt to paint a US and Israeli “hidden hand” as driving the popular anger.
Ayatollah Khamenei had previously labeled the protests as driven by “thugs” who were playing into the hands of Iran’s enemies.
It should be noted that Washington did early on voice support to the protests, sparked initially by the economic crisis in the sanctions-wracked country. The death toll climbed to an estimated 200 dead as protesters clashed with police.
Last week Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had issued an unusual call for Iranian protesters to send the United States videos and photos and other evidence “documenting the regime’s crackdown” on protesters. It’s unclear the extent to which Iranian activists and protesters have heeded his call.
For the last two years, the conflict between the United States and China has dominated the economic and financial-market debate – with good reason. After threats and accusations that long predate US President Donald Trump’s election, rhetoric has given way to action. Over the past 17 months, the world’s two largest economies have become embroiled in the most serious tariff war since the early 1930s. And the weaponization of US trade policy to target perceived company-specific threats such as Huawei has broadened the front in this battle.
I am as guilty as anyone of fixating on every twist and turn of this epic struggle between the world’s two economic heavyweights. From the start, it has been a political conflict fought with economic weapons and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. What that means, of course, is that the economic and financial-market outlook basically hinges on the political dynamic between the United States and China.
In that vein, the so-called phase one “skinny” trade deal announced with great fanfare on October 11 may be an important political signal. While the deal, if ever consummated, will have next to no material economic impact, it provides a strong hint that Trump has finally had enough of this trade war. Consumed by domestic political concerns – especially impeachment and the looming 2020 election – it is in Trump’s interest to declare victory and attempt to capitalize on it to counter his problems at home.
China, for its part, would also like nothing more than to end the trade war. Politics is obviously very different in a one-party state, but the Chinese leadership is not about to capitulate on its core principles of sovereignty and its aspirational mid-century goals of rejuvenation, growth, and development. At the same time, there can be no mistaking downward pressures on the economy. But with Chinese policymakers determined to stay the course of their three-year deleveraging campaign – an important self-inflicted source of the current slowdown – they should be all the more eager to address the trade-related pressures brought about by the conflict with the US.
Consequently, the political calculus of both countries is coming into closer alignment, with each looking for some face-saving truce. There is always a risk that other complications will arise — recent events in Hong Kong and revelations of developments in China’s Xinjiang Province come to mind. But, at least for the time being, the politics of the trade war are now pointing more toward de-escalation rather than a renewed ratcheting up of tensions.
If that is the case, and if a phase one accord is reached, it behooves us to ponder what the world will look like after the trade war.
Several possibilities are at the top of my list: deglobalization, decoupling, and trade diversion.
Deglobalization is unlikely. Like the first wave of globalization that ended ignominiously between World War I and the Great Depression, the current wave has generated a mounting backlash. Populism is rearing its ugly head around the world, and tensions over income and wealth inequality – aggravated by fears that technological innovations such as artificial intelligence will undermine job security – are dominating the political discourse. Yet the climactic event that underscored the demise of the first wave of globalization was a 60% collapse in world trade in the early 1930s. Notwithstanding the current political dysfunction, the odds of a similar outcome today are extremely low.
Global decoupling is also unlikely. Reflecting the explosive growth in global value chains (GVCs) over the past 25 years, the world is woven together more tightly than ever before. That has transformed global competition away from the country-specific paradigm of the past to a far more fragmented competition between widely distributed platforms of inputs, components, design, and assembly functions. A recent IMF study found that GVCs accounted for fully 73% of the rapid growth in global trade that occurred over the 20-year period from 1993 to 2013. Enabled by irreversible trends of plunging transportation costs and technological breakthroughs in logistics and sourcing, the GVC linkages that have come to underpin global economic integration are at little risk of decoupling.
Trade diversion is another matter altogether. As I have long argued, bilateral trade conflicts – even a bilateral decoupling – can do nothing to resolve multilateral imbalances. Putting pressure on one of many trading partners – precisely what the US is doing when it squeezes China in an effort to reduce its merchandise trade deficits with 102 countries – is likely to backfire. That’s because America’s multilateral trade deficit reflects a profound shortfall of domestic saving that will only get worse as the federal budget deficit now veers out of control. Without addressing this chronic saving problem, targeting China will mean pushing the Chinese piece of the multilateral deficit on to America’s other trading partners. Such diversion will shift trade to higher-cost foreign sourcing – the functional equivalent of a tax hike on US consumers.
Trade truce or not, a protracted economic struggle between the US and China has already begun.
A cease-fire in the current battle is nothing more than a politically expedient pause in what is likely to be an enduring Cold War-like conflict. That should worry the US, which is devoid of a long-term strategic framework. China is not. That is certainly the message from Sun Tzu in The Art of War: “When your strategy is deep and far-reaching … you can win before you even fight.”
Scathing Reports Document Worker Abuses At Amazon Warehouses Just In Time For Holiday Rush
Amazon has repeatedly insisted that reports about the allegedly terrible working conditions in its “fulfillment center” warehouses are overblown, and that it’s workers are treated no differently than any other warehouse worker. To try and save face, Amazon announced last year that it would hike pay to at least $15 for thousands of workers in its warehouses and elsewhere.
But the abuses have apparently continued, and a series of reports released just days before the beginning of the holiday shopping season highlighted Amazon’s abuses of both its workers and the public welfare system.
The report that drew the most attention was a joint project between the Reveal Center for Investigative Reporting and The Atlantic which found that Amazon warehouse workers are seriously injured on the job at twice the rate of other warehouse workers – likely a factor of Amazon’s demanding conditions.
The reporter who wrote the piece compared injury records from 23 of Amazon’s 110 fulfillment centers nationwide. He found the rate of injuries at Amazon’s centers was 9.6 per 100 full-time workers in 2018, compared with an industry average of four, according to the Atlantic.
It’s the latest indication that Amazon’s usage of robots to work in harmony with people on its warehouse floors has made work more dangerous for people.
One warehouse worker interviewed for the story was required to scan a new item at her station every 11 seconds – and that Amazon knew when she didn’t.
Dixon’s scan rate – more than 300 items an hour, thousands of individual products a day – was being tracked constantly, the data flowing to managers in real time, then crunched by a proprietary software system called ADAPT. She knew, like the thousands of other workers there, that if she didn’t hit her target speed, she would be written up and, if she didn’t improve, she eventually would be fired.
The report also delved into the death of a worker at one of Amazon’s warehouses, and whether Amazon’s quotas had any impact on that.
Another report released yesterday was from the Economic Roundtable, a nonprofit research group, in a study underwritten by the LA Federation of Labor (full disclosure).
It determined that more than half of Amazon warehouse workers in Southern California live in substandard housing, and that, for every $1 in wages they receive, they also get 24 cents in public assistance. On average, employees receive $5,245 in public benefits a year. And the biggest expense is government subsidized health insurance.
The report’s authors also accused Amazon of positioning its warehouses in California near low-income communities to ensure an endless supply of hungry workers. Meanwhile, the report describes Amazons culture of monitoring employees’ movements as “grueling and high-stress.”
Amazon’s warehouse jobs are grueling and high-stress. Customer orders must be assembled and delivered on rapid schedules. Warehouse workers wear tracking devices that management uses to monitor where they are at any time, how many steps they take to get their packages assembled, and how long it takes to pick up each item.
Those who can’t meet the assembly quotas are terminated. Most logistics employees are working full-time to support their families but 86 percent earn less than the basic living wage for Riverside and San Bernardino counties. The typical worker had total annual earnings in 2017 of $20,585, which is slightly over half of the living wage. Fourteen percent were under the federal poverty threshold and another 31 percent were just above the poverty threshold.
For what it’s worth, Amazon said that it’s high rate of injuries recorded is a result of its zealous reporting of injuries. Amazon said it tries to stop injured workers from returning to work, though employees interviewed by the reporter contested this.
And the company’s “safety protocols” were portrayed as some thinly veiled CYA, since employees say they are almost impossible to follow.
The company does instruct workers on the safe way to move their bodies and handle equipment. But several former workers said they had to break the safety rules to keep up. They would jump or stretch to reach a top rack instead of using a stepladder. They would twist and bend over to grab boxes instead of taking time to squat and lift with their legs. They would hoist extra-heavy items alone to avoid wasting time getting help. They had to, they said, or they would lose their jobs. So they took the risk.
Amazon has benefited generously from public resources, including roughly $800 million in tax breaks in just four counties in Southern California.
Adding to the mounting criticism, a group of grassroots organizations emerged this week to announce their opposition to Amazon’s “growing, powerful grip over our society and economy.” But even as popular support for breaking up big tech surges, automation still threatens millions of jobs over the next decade.
Amnesty International has said that the “surveillance-based” business models of tech giants like Google and Facebook threaten human rights. Big tech has been known to collect private data, censor speech on behalf of the government, and financially punish dissenters by disallowing advertising.
Amnesty International has gone public with its scathing commentary about big tech. Describing Google and Facebook’s advertising-centric business models as “surveillance-based,” Amnesty International warns that the “mass harvesting of data – primarily for the purpose of advertising – has meant that surveillance has become the ‘business model of the internet.’”
So in order to sell you more products and get you to spend your hard-earned dollars, big tech fully intends to spy on you. This is not new information by any stretch of the imagination, however, it’s worth pointing out again.
Amnesty International says:
Facebook and Google both run “continuous analysis and accumulation of information about people,” which constitutes illegal surveillance under the United States Constitution.
Facebook and Google don’t charge for their services, and instead, rely on people “handing over their data as a hidden kind of payment.”
Facebook and Google collect “a wealth of highly detailed data” that allows them to know more about individuals “than the individuals do about themselves.”
Facebook and Google now have the capacity to analyze and predict user habits and behaviors using artificial intelligence (AI) systems equipped with advanced surveillance and tracking technologies.
All of this proves that Facebook, Google, and the rest are acting against the best interests of consumers, though these tech giants and others deny that they’re engaged in any behaviors that harm their customers. –Natural News
“… despite the real value of the services they provide, Google and Facebook’s platforms come at a systemic cost,” the Amnesty International report reveals. “The companies’ surveillance-based business model forces people to make a Faustian bargain, whereby they are only able to enjoy their human rights online by submitting to a system predicated on human rights abuse,” it adds.
“Firstly, an assault on the right to privacy on an unprecedented scale, and then a series of knock-on effects that pose a serious risk to a range of other rights, from freedom of expression and opinion to freedom of thought and the right to non-discrimination.”
“This isn’t the internet people signed up for,” notes Amnesty International. “When Google and Facebook were first starting out two decades ago, both companies had radically different business models that did not depend on ubiquitous surveillance. The gradual erosion of privacy at the hands of Google and Facebook is a direct result of the companies’ establishing dominant market power and control over the global ‘public square.’”
We, as individuals, need to decide if the surveillance and lack of privacy is worth it.
Iran Claims Arrest Of 8 “CIA-Funded Citizen Journalists” After Pompeo Called For ‘Crackdown Videos’
As we’ve covered earlier, Iran’s leadership in predictable fashion has accused the some 200,000 protesters which took to the streets over the past two weeks — triggered by a Nov. 15 sudden gas price hike of at least 50% (and in some place 300%) — of being willing dupes of external enemies, specifically the US, Israeli and Saudi Arabia.
This week as the mainstay of demonstrations were quelled amid an aggressive police crackdown, with some reports of security forces using live gunfire, both the IRGC chief and Ayatollah Khamenei took a ‘victory lap’ of sorts, claiming the dangerous ‘foreign conspiracy’ has been defeated.
And now state media is attempting to offer its people ‘proof’ in the form of eight arrested individuals accused of being CIA assets. State news agency IRNA reported Wednesday that those detained “had received CIA-funded training in various countries under the cover of becoming citizen-journalists,”according toIran’s Intelligence Ministry statements.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei this week accused the US of infiltrating the protests, plotting to ‘send troops’. Image source: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP.
Though specific details have been predictably sparse, six of the accused were reportedly arrested on a charge of “rioting” while “carrying out CIA orders,” and two others were said to been caught trying to “send information abroad.” Ayatollah Khamenei had earlier in the day labeled the protests as driven by “thugs”who were playing into the hands of Iran’s enemies.
“The people foiled a deep, vast and very dangerous conspiracy on which a lot of money was spent for destruction, viciousness and the killing of people,” Khamenei told a group of security officials responsible for quashing the protests.
It appears this latest claim to have eight CIA assets in custody is connected to last week’s declaration by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who issued an unusual call for Iranian protesters to send the United States videos and photos and other evidence “documenting the regime’s crackdown” on protesters.
Washington has not confirmed the extent to which Iranian activists and protesters have actually heeded this call, but it looks like Iranian authorities are using the US Secretary of State’s invitation to round up ‘citizen-journalists’ who have sought to upload videos to social media, despite a nationwide internet outage for over a week in effect, initiated by Tehran authorities.
I have asked the Iranian protestors to send us their videos, photos, and information documenting the regime’s crackdown on protestors. The U.S. will expose and sanction the abuses. https://t.co/korr5p0woA
State authorities and media have since saturated the air waves with accusations of a ‘dangerous foreign plot’ afoot, as Al Jazeera summarized of the latest statements:
Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli estimated as many as 200,000 people took part in the demonstrations, higher than previous claims. He said demonstrators damaged more than 50 police stations, as well as 34 ambulances, 731 banks and 70 gas stations in the country.
“We have individuals who were killed by knives, shotguns and fires,” Fazli said, without offering a casualty figure, in remarks published by IRNA.
The truth is probably somewhere in between: real domestic economic grievances (following months of debilitating US-led sanctions) and legitimate charges of corruption, but whichexternal actors desirous of regime change have sought to hijack.
It should be noted that Washington has from the start consistently voiced support to the protests, sparked initially by the economic crisis in the sanctions-wracked country. The death toll climbed to an estimated 200 dead as protesters clashed with police over the past two week; but those prior mass anti-government demonstrations — which included the burning of banks and gas stations — were largely supplanted at the start of this week by pro-government rallies.
