The deep irony of the tragic Syria war is that after seven years of massive bloodshed, as the government has emerged victorious, it is only now with relative stability and ensuing calm over most of the country that an “economic siege” has hit the population with full force.
Damascus even during some of the worst years of war was always a bustling traffic-packed economic center for its six million inhabitants, but as we noted previously the country has been plunged into a fuel crisis that is the result of new US-led oil sanctions targeting Damascus and Tehran. As one recent WSJ report put it, Iranian oil deliveries to Syria have “fallen off a cliff” since January.
New sanctions on fuel have created the greatest gas crisis in Syria’s recent history. Image via the WSJ
“Lifeless” and “decimated economy” are words used to describe the Syrian capital city and home to Assad in a new Bloomberg piece (which appeared just as busy as most any global cosmopolitan center only months ago), as further “traffic is light” and “morale is down,” according to the report.
“Waiting 19 hours for gas in a lifeless city” — the headlines read. The ongoing weeks-long crisis has now been made especially worse after the Trump administration this week ended embargo exemptions for eight countries allowed to purchase Iranian crude.
“Lines of cars stretching for miles wait hours to fill their tanks with the 20 liters of gasoline that Syrians in government-controlled areas are allowed every five days,” Bloomberg describes. “The last shipment of oil from Iran, which was sending up to 3 million barrels a month, came in October before sanctions were resumed.”
It was thought runaway inflation during the height of the war years would reverse course, but as one Damascus resident related:
“I thought once the war ended, our currency would become stronger and our living standards better,” said Saeed al-Khaldi, who transports vegetables across the sprawling city. Damascus’s population has almost doubled since the war started, to over 6 million, as civilians fled violence in other regions. “Instead, we’re living from one crisis to the other.”
The WSJ reported last month that Iranian oil had been routinely delivered to Syria throughout most of the war, but now “U.S. sanctions have cut off Iranian oil shipments to Syria, taking an unprecedented toll on a flow of crude that had persisted in the face of long-term international restrictions and helped sustain the Assad regime through years of civil war.”
So why did Washington previously keep it flowing? Why cut off supplies now through increased sanctions? Simply put, Assad and his Iranian allies won the war.
And so long as there were US-Saudi supported “rebels” entrenched in Damascus’ suburbs, such as Eastern Ghouta, and other pockets across the country, any targeting of Syrian oil imports at that time would have strangled not only the regime but America’s proxies on the ground as well.
How would #Syria ‘s State have been able to avoid the latest sanctions on Petroleum Products?
By not going for the final “win” in April 2018 in Eastern Ghouta & other opposition held areas near Damascus.
But now, as last year the final anti-Assad pockets of insurgents were rooted out by the Syrian Army, Washington is content to economically strangle the entire region.
One little acknowledged fact is that by United Nations figures, the majority of the displaced from the war are actually “internally displaced persons” (7 million IDP’s based on past years’ estimates by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR), which means Washington’s policy of economic strangulation is directly impacting every part of the population, whether pro-government or not.
The White House still fundamentally prioritizes weakening Syria as crucial in its ultimate goal of regime change in Tehran. In this sense, the “long war” for Syria could merely be in its middle phase.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2XMJjdD Tyler Durden
On February 26, 2019, the Indian Air Force, for the first time since 1971, conducted a raid inside Pakistan, and allegedly hit a terrorist training camp, killing more than 250 terrorists. Pakistan showed photographs of damage to a tree or two. According to Pakistani officials, no one died and no infrastructure was damaged.
Mirage 2000 warplane of the Indian Air Force in medias res. [PT]
Photo credit: hindustantimes.com
It is hard to know the truth, for India did not provide any evidence, nor did Pakistan allow journalists access to the site. Both governments blatantly lie to their citizens, retailing falsehoods so hilarious that even a half-sane person could see through them. But drunk in nationalism, Indians and Pakistanis normally don’t.
Photo of the damage the Indian strike of February 26 did as shown by Pakistan
Photo credit: BBC News
India’s intrusion was in response to a suicide car-bombing on February 14 in Kashmir, a bombing that killed 45 troops. Indians were moving a convoy of 2,500. They were in buses, not in armoured cars, as officially stated. Challenging the army is sacrilegious, so no one asks why their movement was so badly planned, and why they had not been airlifted, which would have been far cheaper and easier.
Image from the suicide attack in Kashmir that preceded the Indian air strike [PT]
PTI Photo / S. Irfan
In all the ramping up of emotions in the aftermath of the suicide bombing on the troops, it became very clear that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi would lose the next elections (which are due in a couple of months) unless he retaliated. Sending India to war was a small price.
Soon after India’s intrusion, Pakistan closed its airspace. Tension at the border went up significantly, and continues to be high.
A day later, Pakistan attempted airstrikes in India. In the ensuing challenge, one of India’s MIG-21 planes, known as flying coffins because they are very old and outdated, was shot down by a Pakistani missile. The Indian pilot parachuted into Pakistani territory. India claimed to have downed a Pakistani F-16. Pakistan denied the claim.
The Indian pilot captured by Pakistan was beaten up by locals and obviously by the Pakistani army to get him to praise Pakistani “hospitality” and “kindness”
TV stations in both countries were singing songs about the valor of their troops, which consist of uneducated rural people with no other job opportunities and absolutely no clue about what they are fighting for. These troops act as gladiators for the spectacle of the bored, TV-watching masses, who feel vicariously brave while munching their chips. Of course, the social media warriors know that it is not they who will be at the front-lines in any serious conflict.
A video from the Hindustan Times – “Pulwama attack triggers national outrage, protests at many places” [PT]
It is not in the culture of the Third World masses to feel peace and happiness. Either they are slogging away in the field and going to sleep a bit hungry — which helps to keep them focused and sane — or, if they have time on their hands, they become hedonistic and graduate to deriving pleasure from destructive activities. The latter becomes apparent as soon as they have enough to eat. This feedback system in their culture applies entropic force to take them back to Malthusian equilibrium.
Pakistan’s raison d’etre is to obsess over Kashmir and the human rights violations therein that the Indian army inflicts, oblivious of a much worse tyranny provided by its own army and fanatics, particularly in Baluchistan. Once Pakistan’s social media had put the people into a trance of war, officials had no option but to retaliate.
Both armies are thoroughly incompetent and disorganized, and extremely corrupt (troops in India actually double up as house-servants of their bosses — something that would be inconceivable to a well-organized and truly nationalistic body of soldiers.) The tribal societies of Pakistan and India merely posture; they have no courage to go into a real war. But alas! Posturing can become reality.
Army cartoon from an Indian newspaper [PT]
On this occasion, threats of nuclear bombing were made. The bombs would probably have failed to explode, but it was obvious that the United States could not be a bystander. Despite the fact that Trump was busy in Vietnam with another nuclear-armed country, North Korea, he had to make a few calls.
He had to interfere, as an adult does when two kids are fighting. Those of us who complain — quite rightly — about the US military-industrial complex should consider the unseen, unrecognized good that the US does in helping to avoid a nuclear holocaust.
Kashmir, Bone of Contention
The cause of such a war – the stated point of contention between India and Pakistan – is Kashmir. They both want to have Kashmir. And, just to complicate things, some Kashmiris want full independence. But it must be said: the approach of everyone involved is grossly stupid.
Three countries are laying claim to Kashmir [PT]
Kashmir (including Jammu, “the gateway to Kashmir”) has a GDP of US $22 billion. It has only 1% of India’s population, but it gets 10% of federal grants. India’s defense budget is US $52 billion, with Kashmir as the primary reason; and because of Kashmir, a lot of additional funds are spent on internal security, including the 500,000 Indian troops positioned there.
Kashmir is a bottomless pit for India, and the money does no good for Kashmir, either. Kashmir must exist under the tyranny of terrorists and of Indian forces, who under the law do not face accountability in the courts. Kashmir has no resources of value or any economy of substance; its populace is inward-looking and fanatic. There is no reason for India not to kick Kashmir out of the federation.
Pakistan, with a fraction of India’s economy, spends money comparable to India’s to try to take over Kashmir, occupy the one-third of Kashmir that it has right now, train terrorists, and, as a consequence, destroy itself economically and socially. Were Kashmir to join Pakistan, it would offer only negative value, dragging down Pakistan’s per capita GDP. There is no rational reason for Pakistan to accept Kashmir, let along fight for it.
Kashmir as an independent country would be landlocked and not much different from Afghanistan. No sane Kashmiri would want to be independent from India. Although India is backward and wallows in poverty and tyranny, in relative terms it is the best hope for Kashmir. Moreover, Ahmadi Muslims who went to Pakistan after the separation of 1947 are deemed non-Muslims by mainstream Pakistanis and by Pakistan’s constitution. The same fate awaits Kashmiris if they join Pakistan.
In a sane world, there is nothing to negotiate. As you can see above, I could be on any of the three sides of the negotiating table and accept the demands of the other two without asking for anything in return.
Unfortunately, my compromises would not be seen as such. In keeping with Third World proclivities, they would be seen as signs of weakness, and new demands would soon be made, ceaselessly generated by superstition, ego, expediency, tribalism, and emotion. This, not Kashmir, is the primary problem, and this is the reason why here is no solution, ever.
Institutionalized Irrationality
Muslims are not the only culprits — it is merely that talking about them post-9/11 is politically more acceptable. In the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East, and Africa, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims are all included in the cycle of tyranny and irrationality. If Islam comes across as worse, it is mostly because in these places it has institutionalized irrationality, fed on it, and been self-victimized by it.
Since the inclusion of the sharia in Pakistan’s constitution in the 1980s, Pakistan, which was until then richer than India on a per capita basis, has taken a rapid slide downwards. Today, freedom of speech is so constrained that any accusation of having said a word against the “holy” book or the army can result in capital punishment — if, that is, one avoids getting lynched before reaching the courts.
Protests erupt in Pakistan after a conviction for blasphemy against Asia Bibi – a Christian woman – was overturned [PT]
A Christian woman, Asia Bibi, was sentenced to death in Pakistan in 2010 for the crime of drinking water from a cup reserved for Muslims. After a decade of prison, she was released, not because the Supreme Court saw the case as utterly stupid, which it should have, but because it didn’t see clear proof that she had committed the “crime.”
Pakistan erupted in civil chaos as millions thronged the streets, asking for her blood. In my totem pole of values and consequences, Pakistan is 25 years ahead of India in self-destruction.
An Ocean of Corruption
Corruption these days hits me soon after I land in Delhi. It has now become customary for the toilet-caretaker at the airport to demand a tip. With his dirty hands he offers tissue paper to me and tries to make me feel guilty if I don’t accept it.
The Indian government has tried to control corruption, through the demonetization of 86% of currency in 2016 and the imposition of a nationwide sales tax a year later. While these haven’t controlled corruption, they have managed to seriously harm the economy by destroying the informal sector, which employs 82% of Indians. And without the informal sector, the formal sector will falter.
Financial corruption is not even the real problem. Were bribery to stop, India would rapidly become North Korea or Eritrea. I say that because financial corruption is a necessary safety valve in over-regulated societies. When such backward societies do manage to control bribery in isolation, they create extremely suffocating environments.
North Korea and Eritrea have actually controlled bribery by getting their citizens to snitch on each other and by extraordinary levels of punishments. Backward societies like these are necessarily subdued and stagnant, lack of skills being the real reason for their backwardness; and the lack of the safety valve of bribery constricts whatever potential they have.
But financial corruption, a symptomatic problem, is seen as the prime problem by politically correct kids who go to study at Ivy League colleges and then to work for IMF, the World Bank, etc., without any real-life experience. They see financial corruption being removed from one place, only to find it reappearing in another; they don’t understand what is happening.
India is an ocean of corruption, but it’s not just financial. More importantly, it is cultural. The real corruption is cultural irrationality, the irrationality of people who operate not through honesty, pride, compassion, or honor, but through expediency. Trying to control bribery in such societies does not work, because bribes are just a part of the whole package of social corruption and irrationality.
As the economy has grown, India has been on a path to increased fanaticism and violent nationalism. These days, if you are found to be in possession of beef, you risk getting lynched. Nationalism is on the rise, rather rapidly. You are forced to stand up for the national anthem before the start of movies in cinema halls.
Complaining about the Prime Minister on social media can land you in prison. Opposing his policies can get you beaten up. India’s constitution stays secular, but the trend is in the same direction that Pakistan has been on.
Dubious Economic Miracle
The World Bank, IMF, etc. continue to report that India is among the fastest growing economies in the world, and is perhaps even faster growing than China. While these numbers are completely erroneous, even if they weren’t, institutionally the Indian subcontinent has been rudderless since the time the British left. All economic growth since the time of so-called independence has come because of importation of technology from the West.
But what about the fact that India has one of the largest numbers of engineers and PhDs in the world? It is easy to get a degree without studying — and not just in India — and the results are obvious. In the age of the internet, when a competent engineer can work remotely for a Western client, Indian “engineers” work as taxi drivers, deliver Amazon products, or get jobs as janitors. Their degrees are just degrees on paper.
Moreover, education is a tool; so is technology. They must be employed by reason. Without reason, “education” and technology serve the wrong masters: tribalism and superstitions. No wonder that with increasing prosperity, “educational” achievement, and better technology, India is regressing culturally.
India is massively lacking in skills. Finding a plumber or an electrician is an uphill task—they create more problems than they solve. Indians are completely unprepared for the modern economy. This is the reason why you hardly see anything in Western markets that is made in India, despite India’s having more than one-sixth of the world’s population. It is virtually impossible to form a company of five people in India and expect it to work with any kind of efficiency.
People often blame China for copying Western technology. While that is true, one must recognize that copying takes a certain amount of skill that people in some other economies simply don’t have. The situation of India has worsened as the best of Indians now increasingly prefer to leave for greener pastures, including even Papua New Guinea.
Lacking leadership, post-British India is rapidly becoming tribal, fanatic, and nationalistic. We must remember that India as a union is together only because of inertia from the days of the British. When the inertia is gone, India will disintegrate into tribal units, as will Pakistan and much of the rest of the Third World.
Conclusion
A horrible war will one day break out between India and Pakistan. It will not be because of Kashmir, which is just an excuse, but because irrational people always blame others, envy them, and hate them. They fail to negotiate. They have no valor, but constant posturing will eventually trigger something. There is no solution to their problems. Every problem that the British left behind has simmered and gotten worse.
As soon as India reaches a stage where it can no longer grow economically because of imported technology, its cultural decline will become rapidly visible. Though India is 25 years behind Pakistan, both are walking toward self-destruction, to a tribal, medieval past.
As for the US, the job of any rational US president is to help ensure that destruction stays within the borders of India and Pakistan.
Modi’s electoral chances restored by militarism [PT]
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2WbOGmu Tyler Durden
President Trump announced Friday that the United States will withdraw its signature from the UN Arms Trade Treaty after concerns were raised by 2nd Amendment activists that it might infringe on Americans’ right to bear arms.
“Under my administration we will never surrender American sovereignty to anyone, we will never allow foreign bureaucrats to trample on your Second Amendment freedom and that is why my administration will never ratify the U.N. trade treaty,” Trump said during the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting in Indianapolis, according to Fox News.
“I am officially announcing today that the United States will be revoking the effect of America’s signature from this badly misguided treaty, we’re taking our signature back,” Trump added.
“Under my Administration, we will never surrender American sovereignty to anyone. We will never allow foreign bureaucrats to trample on your Second Amendment freedoms. And that is why my Administration will never ratify the UN Arms Trade Treaty.” pic.twitter.com/j1xnuUdX1x
The treaty, signed in 2013 by former President Barack Obama, seeks to regulate international trade in conventional firearms to “prevent and eradicate the illicit trade in conventional arms and prevent their diversion.”
On Friday, Trump signed a notice to the Senate asking that the ratification process be stopped and the treaty returned to the White House, where Trump said “I will dispose of it.”
While supporters of the treaty have argued that it could not infringe on Second Amendment rights, the document had long been opposed by the NRA — who pointed to the treaty’s call for national recordkeeping and for governments to share those records, and claimed that the treaty meant that U.S. gun policy “could become the rest of the world’s business and subject to its approval, on pain of trade restrictions if it doesn’t meet ‘international norms.’”
Trump has been skeptical of both the U.N. and multilateral agreements and supported the NRA’s concerns in his speech. –Fox News
“By taking these actions, we are reaffirming that American liberty is sacred and that American citizens live by American laws not by laws of foreign countries,” said Trump.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2WdRtvu Tyler Durden
Once you see the whole thing, you can’t unsee it. But therein lies the problem. It is so far out there away from mainstream convention getting anyone to recognize what their eyes are recording is an enormous task. Even when someone happens to uncover, for themselves, a significant piece it is often too unfamiliar to truly appreciate its significance.
In Plato’s Republic, the philosopher tells of his brother being taught by Socrates through the allegory of the cave. Prisoners chained up living forever inside the dark space only perceive the wider outside world via shadows projected upon a blank wall as objects or other people pass by a fire. These inmates even give these shadows names and think of them as real.
They never desire to leave, either. What they know of existence is all they want to know. The shadows suffice for their worldview, having never seen the outside. But once broken out and into the world, the world of observation, they can never go back to the shadows.
The Wall Street Journalreported yesterday that China’s banks are running short of dollars. Shocking, I know.
China’s major commercial banks have a funding issue outside Beijing’s control: They’re running low on the U.S. dollars they need for activities both at home and abroad.
Regular, longtime readers here will wonder what took the Journal so long to write something like this. The article would’ve been slightly helpful had it been written in 2014 when China’s dollar problem first turned deadly serious.
The chains of Economics, however, are just that strong. Rather than amount to a breakthrough, though, the author is merely relating to you his own interpretation of this new shadow making its appearance on his wall.
The imbalance at Bank of China is small relative to its balance sheet, so it shouldn’t be seen as an imminent threat. The government’s $3.1 trillion in foreign exchange reserves are probably also a backstop in a crunch, but it’s unclear how bad things would have to get before Beijing would permit its use by major commercial banks.
It pays, literally, to know one’s history before making such statements. China’s total foreign exchange reserve once totaled just about $4 trillion, peaking in June 2014. Where’d the other $900 billion go over the last half decade? How did things turn out as so much disappeared?
Of course, as is usual, there is much more to the story than is being presented.Footnote dollars make their customary cameo in it even though, by all evidence, they are among the major players if not the star of the show.
In its annual report, Bank of China says that its asset-liability imbalance is more than addressed by dollar funding that doesn’t sit on its balance sheet. Instruments like currency swaps and forwards are accounted for elsewhere.
If that was anywhere close to being true, “more than addressed by dollar funding that doesn’t sit on its balance sheet”, then we wouldn’t be talking incessantly about China’s dollar short; to the point that, eight years later, the Wall Street Journal finally notices and writes a semi-concerned piece about a serious enough fragment that just doesn’t quite fit the mainstream worldview (QE and all that supposed money printing).
Shadows on the wall.
Nowhere in this relatively brief mention does the author ever ask the big question. In many ways, it is a positive sign that China’s dollar shortage is even being addressed in the mainstream at all. It is 2019 and somehow global shadow money, this eurodollar system, remains in its own shadows. That’s because everyone still believes, and the media reinforces the narrative, that 2008 was about subprime mortgages.
As I said on the most recent Eurodollar University segment, if that was true then there is nothing whatsoever to fear. The world doesn’t have a subprime mortgage problem in 2019 and most likely never will again, certainly not in my lifetime.
What if, though, 2008 wasn’t ever about subprime mortgages?
During the first true banking panic since the Great Depression, by far the biggest contribution to the (lacking) rescue was the Federal Reserve’s dollar swaps with foreign central banks.
Ask yourself, why was it that the US central bank had been handing out more than half a trillion in US dollar funding to overseas entities during the worst part of the worst banking panic in four generations? The better question to ask approaches it from the other side. Why were foreign banks domiciled elsewhere so desperate for US dollar funding that they were begging their local central bank, demanding that their local officials bail them out in US dollar terms?
What the Journal fails to question is the only factor that matters, the one that connects 2008 with 2019, the one that connects China with every other place around the world struggling to find even the smallest toehold on meaningful economic growth; always, always falling far short.
This article instead leaves you with the impression of a triviality, a mere interesting if odd aside amongst far more central conversations driven by important men and women of high office. A footnote, perhaps. Those Economics shadows on the wall do command the bulk of each prisoner’s attention and consideration.
Having briefly described “what”, it is never asked “why.” Why? How can it be that China’s most important banks are increasingly short of US dollars?
For once, at least, they can’t blame “rate hikes” and QT. China’s growing dollar problem, even what the Journal can make of it (chart included), predates both by many years. Even if you are chained in Plato’s cave, it is enough of a different sort of shadow to make you think there is so much more going on out there in the real world. In our shadows.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2J0iNcO Tyler Durden
The founder of Singapore-based Helios Capital Management fell into an open manhole outside a shopping mall in Mumbai on Thursday. Fortunately, Samir Arora wasn’t hurt, and managed to save himself thanks to his quick reflexes as he managed to cling to the sides of the manhole and pull himself out. He suffered only minor scratches.
Thank you Neeraj. It was scary as hell (and smelly). Was within micro seconds of disappearing. Quick reflexes and shape of manhole gave me second life.
Guys and gals- be careful in life and remain safe. Yeh hai Mumbai meri jaan and was close to taking my jaan. https://t.co/6RX3M2GatS
I am fine. Only minor scratches for which I got an injection.
Basically I was able to-how I don’t know- hold on to the 2 sides while being inside till chest level and then got pulled out.
He joked that if city workers find his Samsung phone, which he lost during the incident, they could keep it. All in the all, the incident was “scary as hell.”
If BMC finds my Samsung phone in the drain they can keep it with my compliments.
And rightfully so. According to Bloomberg, a city doctor fell into a manhole on a flooded street in Mumbai back in 2017 and died. He was just minutes away from his home. More recently, a bridge collapse in the city killed half a dozen people.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party has pledged to spend $1.44 trillion to upgrade infrastructure and living standards in Mumbai if it returns to power after this month’s general election.
Adding a comic twist to the story, the local government tried to deny the existence of the manhole, but Arora replied with its exact location.
The open manhole was outside the office of Phoenix Mills located at
Shree Laxmi Woolen Mills Estate, R.R Hosiery Building, Off Dr. E. Moses Road, Mahalaxmi, Mumbai https://t.co/yRoDcCWoj3
I owe the corporate media an apology. For the last few years, I’ve been writing all these essays explaining how they were perpetrating an enormous psyop on the American public… a psyop designed to convince the public that Donald Trump “colluded” with Russia to steal the presidency from Hillary Clinton. Up until a few days ago, I would have sworn that they had published literally thousands of articles and editorials, and broadcast countless TV segments, more or less accusing him of treason, and being a “Russian intelligence asset,” and other ridiculous stuff like that.
Also, and I’m still not sure how this happened, I somehow got the idea in my head that the investigation that Special Counsel Robert Mueller was meticulously conducting had something to do with Donald Trump conspiring or “colluding” with Russia, or being some kind of “Manchurian president,” or being blackmailed by Putin with a pee-tape, or something.
In any event, the publication of the Mueller report has cleared things up for me. I get it now. The investigation was never about Trump colluding with Russia. It was always about Trump obstructing the investigation of the collusion with Russia that the investigation was not about. Mueller was never looking for collusion. It was not his job to look for collusion. His job was to look for obstruction of his investigation of alleged obstruction of his investigation of non-collusion, which he found, and detailed at length in his report, and which qualifies as an impeachable offense.
Not that he proved that there was no collusion! On the contrary, as professional hermeneuticistshave been repeatedly pointing out on Twitter, given that Mueller wasn’t looking for collusion, and that collusion could never have been legally established, and isn’t even a legal term, Mueller’s failure to find any actual evidence of collusion is evidence of collusion, notwithstanding the fact that he couldn’t prove it, and wasn’t even looking for it, except to the extent it allowed him to establish a case for the obstruction he was actually investigating.
In other words, his investigation was launched in order to investigate the obstruction of his investigation. And, on those terms, it was a huge success. The fact that it didn’t prove “collusion” means nothing — that’s just a straw man argument that Trump and his Russian handlers make. The goal all along was to prove that Trump obstructed an investigation of his obstruction of that investigation, not that he was “colluding” with Putin, or any of the other paranoid nonsense that the corporate media were forced to report on, once an investigation into his obstruction of the investigation was launched.
See, and this is why I owe the media an apology. All those thousands of hysterical articles, editorials, and TV segments accusing Donald Trump of treason, and of literally being a Russian agent, and probably Putin’s homosexual lover, were not just ridiculous propaganda. The corporate media were not engaged in a concerted campaign to convince the public that Trump conspired with a foreign adversary to brainwash millions of African Americans into refusing to vote for Hillary Clinton with some emails and a handful of Facebook posts. No, the media were simply covering the story of his obstruction of the investigation of the made-up facts the intelligence agencies got them to relentlessly disseminate to generate the appearance of a story, which, once it was out there, had to be reported on, regardless of how it came into being, or whose nefarious purposes it served.
Moreover, regardless of whether Mueller did or did not establish obstruction (or attempted obstruction, which is just as impeachable) of his non-investigation of collusion, he absolutely established that Russia attacked us by brainwashing all those African Americans who were definitely going to vote for Clinton until they saw those divisive Facebook ads and those DNC emails that Putin personally ordered Trump to order Paul Manafort to personally deliver to Julian Assange, who was hunkered down in the Ecuadorean embassy poking holes in King-size condoms, abusing his cat, and smearing invisible poo all over the walls of his kitchen.
Now, these are all indisputable facts, which Mueller establishes in his report by referencing the repeated assertions of a consensus of U.S. intelligence agencies, and the corporate media’s relentless repetition of those agencies’ assertions, and the feeling a lot of people have that they must be factual to some extent, given how often they have been repeated, and referenced, and authoritatively asserted, and how familiar they sound when they hear them, again. The fact that there exists no evidence whatsoever of any “Russian attack,” and that all we’re actually talking about is the publication of a bunch of emails that DNC members actually wrote, and some ridiculous social media posts, should not in any way detract from the fact that the Russians launched a totally devastating, virtually Pearl Harbor-scale attack on the fabric of American democracy, which Trump obstructed an investigation of, or attempted to obstruct an investigation of, or conspired to attempt to obstruct an investigation of obstruction of.
Or whatever. The point is, now they’ve got him! His justice obstructing days are numbered! Break out the pussyhats and vuvuzelas, because next stop is Impeachment City! So what if he’s not a Russian agent and didn’t conspire or collude with anyone? He got elected without permission, and insulted a lot of powerful people, and … well, who cares what they impeach him for, as long as they impeach him for something!
They kind of have to do it, at this point, don’t they? They just spent most of the last three years rolling out an official narrative in which the Russians are running around attacking democracy,poisoning ducks with Novichok perfume, fomenting populist uprisings in France, and just generally being the evil enemies that the Islamic terrorists used to be, before they turned into freedom fighters and helped us try to take over Syria.
If the Democrats don’t impeach Donald Trump, that official narrative might fall apart. Liberals might have to face the fact that Americans elected Donald Trump president, not because they were brainwashed by Russians, or had any illusions about what a thuggish, self-aggrandizing buffoon he is, but because they were so disgusted with the neoliberal Washington establishment, and the global capitalist elites that own it, that they leapt at the chance to vote against it, and probably would have elected anyone who promised to even marginally disrupt it … but there I go drifting off into my crazy conspiracist thinking again.
Anyway … I’m really sorry about all that stuff I wrote about the corporate media. Rest assured, that won’t happen again. Admittedly, I blew the Russiagate thing, but I promise to do better with Obstructiongate, or Tax-Returnsgate, or Whatevergate.
It doesn’t really matter what we call it, right?
The important thing is to teach the masses what happens when they vote for unauthorized candidates. We’re only halfway through that lesson. Stay tuned … there’s much, much more to come!
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2VtoKp5 Tyler Durden
A national survey conducted by ABC News/Washington Post reveals that support for impeaching President Trump has fallen to an all-time low following the release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russia’s involvement in the 2016 US election, which found that President Trump and his campaign did not coordinate with the Kremlin to affect the outcome of the election.
According to the new poll released on Friday, support for impeachment dropped to 37%, down from 40% in January. For context, support to impeach Trump hit a high of 49% in August.
While the overall figure dropped – Democrat support of impeachment actually rose to 62%, but sharply to 36% among Independent voters, and 10% among Republicans.
The public overall appears cautiously supportive of the Mueller report, which Trump has characterized as “a total hit job.” Fifty-one percent in this survey, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, call the report fair and even-handed – just a bare majority, albeit far more than the 21 percent who say it’s unfair. Still, that leaves many, 28 percent, who are withholding judgment on whether Mueller’s report is fair or not.
While criticizing the report, Trump has claimed “complete and total exoneration” in its findings. Again the public’s response differs: Thirty-one percent say the report cleared Trump of all wrongdoing, almost entirely an ingathering of his political supporters. Many more, 53 percent, say the report did not exonerate Trump. An additional 16 percent have no opinion. –ABC News
Going into 2020, nearly half of those polled – 46% – say the Mueller report won’t be a factor in their vote for president. Of the remaining respondents, 36% say it makes them more likely to oppose Trump’s re-election vs. 14% who say it won’t. That said, ABC News admits that “demographically many in this group look unlikely to support him anyway.”
As far as election interference goes, 42% say Russian meddling undermined the legitimacy of the 2016 election, while 49% say it didn’t. 53% say interference by Russia and other countries could threaten the legitimacy of the 2020 election.
As far as Trump’s approval goes – 39% approve of the job Trump is doing, vs a 54% disapproval rate – down from its peak disapproval of 60% last August.
Trump’s approval rating is sharply partisan, peaking at 78 percent among Republicans, 83 percent among highly conservative Americans and 77 percent among evangelical white Protestants, a core Republican group. Those compare with 6 percent among Democrats and 9 percent among liberals. But it’s the political middle that turns the tide against Trump: Among independents, 40 percent approve of his job performance; among moderates, 30 percent. –ABC News
ABC News notes that 40% approval from independents is a numerical high for Trump within that group – up 8% since January.
Looking at Trump’s approval by race and gender, Trump’s approval rating among men is at 47% vs 32% women, while whites vs. nonwhites approve of Trump 51% and 20% respectively.
Methodology via ABC News.
This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by landline and cellular telephone April 22-25, 2019, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 1,001 adults. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3.5 points, including the design effect. Partisan divisions are 29-26-36 percent, Democrats-Republicans-independents.
The survey was produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates of New York, N.Y., with sampling and data collection by Abt Associates of Rockville, Md. See details on the survey’s methodology here.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2ZCgqTh Tyler Durden
David Trachtenberg, the Pentagon’s deputy undersecretary for policy, warned that China and Russia had developed asymmetric advantages in conventional and nuclear forces in the last decade, and now the US is behind the curve in modernizing its sea, air and land nuclear forces, reported USNI News.
Trachtenberg said during a presentation at the Brookings Institution, the Pentagon delayed modernizing five armed service branches: Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, Marine Corps, and Navy for two decades.
“In the 2000s, we skipped a generation” in modernizing ballistic missiles, nuclear submarines, and strategic bombers. During the same timeframe, allied forces in Europe took similar measures to reduce nuclear weapons.
At the same time, on the other side of the world, India, Iran, and North Korea developed nuclear capabilities of their own.
“Most of the US’s nuclear deterrence was built in the 1980s or even earlier,” Trachtenberg said during the presentation. Nuclear Triad missiles are now “aging into obsolescence.”
Trachtenberg said the US is not involved in a new arms race with Russia or China but mentions both countries are quickly modernizing its nuclear and conventional forces.
In an exclusive conversation with USNI News, he said the Pentagon’s effort to modifying existing sea-launched cruise and ballistic missiles are closing a missile gap that Moscow is exploiting through the development of ground-based intermediate range cruise missiles installed along the European Russia border. The Trump administration has said their deployment violated the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) agreement between both countries. As a result, the US intends to leave the treaty in the coming months, then test two missiles in the 2H19 that exceed the treaty’s limits.
“We’re not attempting to match Russia system for system,” but there’s an effort within the Pentagon to “close a gap” that Moscow has exposed, he said. American sea-launched systems “provide a mix and range of capabilities” can be used to counter Russia.
Trachtenberg said Russia’s military doctrine allows for “tactical nuclear weapons and [nuclear-armed] cruise missiles” in resolving a confrontation. As the US’s stance on “first use” of tactical nuclear weapons, he said the policy is one of “constructive ambiguity,” the same for NATO countries.
He cited “the novel nuclear systems that President [Vladimir] Putin unveiled with great fanfare” last year as more evidence that Russia is modernizing forces. It sparks the question of how committed the US is in “extending deterrence” to its allies in Europe and the Indo-Pacific region.
In addition to modernizing US nuclear weapons, he said fifth-generation fighters, such as the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II had surrounded Russia and China with deployments with allied forces, created an F-35 friend circle to extend deterrence.
For allies like Japan and South Korea, a “nuclear umbrella” of deterrence protects them as well as the American homeland with advanced air and missile defense systems like Patriot and Theater High-Altitude Area Defense systems.
Modernizing nuclear forces “is the ultimate guarantor of our security.” Extended deterrence is “more challenging” since North Korea possesses nuclear weapons and long-range missiles.
One topic that wasn’t discussed in the presentation nor the conversation with USNI was the acquisition of hypersonic technologies by China and Russia. It’s possible that both countries have far superior hypersonics, and have possibly matured the technology and launched series production for deployment in the coming years. This would create a monstrous defense and missile gap that could send the American empire to its knees.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2UEgfTO Tyler Durden
The regulatory fight over Elon Musk’s bizarre tweeting habit is once again over, and once again the SEC has folded like a lawn chair.
Late on Friday, Tesla’s outspoken, if increasingly unpredictable and chaotic CEO, and the Securities and Exchange Commission said in a court that they are settling the long-running legal dispute over how Musk posts news about his electric-car company, avoiding a decision by a federal judge in New York on whether the billionaire should be held in contempt of court.
In the new settlement – which was the direct result of the SEC demanding the judge find Musk in contempt for his brazen violation of his prior settlement arising from his “funding secured” lawsuit – The SEC and Musk agreed to amend an earlier settlement to add specific topics he can’t tweet about or otherwise communicate in writing without explicit pre-approval from a Tesla lawyer. They include:
the company’s financial condition,
potential mergers or acquisitions,
production and sales numbers,
new or proposed business lines,
previously unpublished projections and forecasts, and
Musk’s purchase or sale of Tesla securities.
In other words, the SEC “punished” Musk for his fraudulent attempt to crush shorts with his infamous “funding secured” tweet, by demanding he not tweet inside information (and just in case he is confused, they also spelled out to the CEO what is considered inside information), something which would land virtually any other non-billionaire in jail instantly. But, when it comes to the SEC, Musk is clearly more equal than others. Perhaps it’s time to start asking why.
Needless to say, this was another bruising defeat for the SEC, and another crushing victory for Musk, who will only feel even more emboldened to mock and disparage the clearly toothless SEC after this settlement.
Additionally, there was no mention in the court papers filed Friday of any new fines or additional controls on Musk, which had been a possibility. The agreement must be reviewed and approved by U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan before it can take effect; there is a small chance the Judge will throw up on the agreement and demand a stricter settlement from the SEC.
“This is a clear win for Elon Musk,” said Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities in New York. “This removes an overhang on the stock because many feared this would not end well for Tesla. The bark ended up being worse than the bite. There’s no structural changes.”
Confirming this, Tesla stock, which had been battered all day and closed at multi-year lows and right where Musk’s massive margin call may be called in, rose in extended trading, gaining as much as 1.4% after the close of regular trading.
As a reminder, Musk first under renewed wrist-slapping criticism from the SEC after a Feb. 19 tweet that the regulator said violated an October settlement between them, which had ended an earlier brouhaha over his proclamations on Twitter, as Bloomberg recounts. Musk said he hadn’t violated the agreement. Had Musk been found in contempt, the judge had the authority to impose hefty fines and new controls on how he communicates with the public.
At an April 4 hearing, Nathan told both sides to “put on your reasonableness pants” and gave them two weeks to work something out. She extended the deadline to April 25. Musk and the SEC on that date then asked for five more days to continue discussions.
The judge had urged both sides to try to eliminate ambiguities in the earlier settlement, which required Musk to get internal approval before issuing some tweets. By reaching a compromise, Musk would avoid more penalties while the SEC would affirm the Tesla CEO’s obligation not to release misleading information on social media.
Musk and the SEC have been fighting since the CEO tweeted Aug. 7 that he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private, sending the shares surging. After an investigation, the regulator sued, saying Musk had misled investors. Musk and Tesla ended that dispute by agreeing to each pay $20 million – most likely funded by his massive margin loan that he has taken out from Morgan Stanley – without admitting wrongdoing.
As part of the October deal, the two parties also agreed that any future social media posts by the CEO would be reviewed by a lawyer — known as Musk’s Twitter sitter — for any information that might affect investors’ decisions. As it later turned out, Musk instantly violated that agreement – resorting to claims that all his tweets are protected by the 1st amendment and thus can not be policed – and the SEC later accused Musk of violating the deal when he tweeted in February that Tesla would make about half a million cars in 2019. He corrected that a few hours later, after consulting with the internal lawyer, with a tweet saying deliveries would reach only about 400,000.
The regulator argued that Musk was required to have his tweet approved in advance under the terms of the settlement. Musk’s attorneys countered that the post wasn’t material and that the Tesla CEO has been complying with the accord.
Then, just to spit some more on the SEC’s now obliterated credibility and reputation, last weekend Musk, for good measure, repeated his February claim, responding to another Twitter user’s post by tweeting “Tesla will make over 500k cars in next 12 months.”
We fully expect Musk to violate this latest settlement in days, if not hours.
Last week we noted that something unusual had happened in the equity market volatility complex. Specifically, VIX had collapsed at its fastest pace in history.
From over 36 to almost a 10 handle a week ago, the Fed’s flip-flop had re-energized the sell-vol-at-all-costs trade that has become the bread-and-butter of so many of newly-minted ‘gurus’ in this market.
As we pointed out, this was the biggest drop year-to-date and the biggest 17-week collapse in risk since records began (in the last ’80s)
But things changed a little this week as the S&P (thanks to a panic bid at the close on Friday) pressed up to near its record intraday high, VIX ended the week higher…
However, as we highlighted previously,when it comes to volatility-based asset flows in 2019, the picture is confused at best (remember, the S&P rise back to all time highs has occurred even as equity investors have been pulling money from equity funds week after week).
Commenting on the latest VIX flows, Deutsche Bank’s Parag Thatte reiterates JPMorgan’s point, observing that long VIX ETPs have seen significant inflows totaling $2bn YTD, as retail investors hedge equity gains. This record inflow into VIX ETPs, amounting to $2 billion in notional, is shown on the chart below.
Yet while retail investors, which traditionally prefer ETPs to hedge exposure, have been loading up on crash bets, institutional investors which traditionally prefer the greater liquidity of the futures market, are taking the other side of the volatility trade and as the latest CFTC commitment of traders report shows tonight, the speculative net short position in VIX futures has broken to a new record – the greatest short VIX position ever.
If one believes institutions, one look at the chart above confirms that market complacency is greater than it was either ahead of the Q4 mini bear market and February 2018 Volmageddon.
Ignoring the steam-roller of yield curve compression that signals this nickel-picking-up-plan won’t end well…
But we are sure all those specs will know when to exit their position and escape unharmed.
They better hope that global money supply keeps surging…
So who will be right – retail or institutions. Since both positions are at record levels, the answer should emerge in the very near future.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2VtEtEI Tyler Durden<
