iftttwall

An “anti-vax” Texas nurse has been fired from a hospital after she posted the horrific details of a toddler’s measles infection Friday night in an anti-vax Facebook group. A concerned parent took screenshots and reported the nurse’s post the hospital’s Facebook page, according to ABC News, citing hospital officials. 

Her firing comes one day after the Texas Children’s Hospital announced it was investigating the incident. 

“We were made aware that one of our nurses posted protected health information regarding a patient on social media,” the hospital said in a Tuesday night statement. “We take these matters very seriously as the privacy and well-being of our patients is always a top priority. After an internal investigation, this individual is no longer with the organization.“

The now-deleted Facebook post to the “Proud Parents of Unvaccinated Children – Texas” page read in part:

“I think it’s easy for us nonvaxxers to make assumptions but most of us have never and will never see one of theses diseases… for the first time in my career I saw Measles this week. Actually most of my coworkers and the ER docs saw measles for the first time as well. And honestly, it was rough. The kid was super sick. Sick enough to be admitted to the ICU and he looked miserable…By no means have I changed my vax stance, and I never will. But I just wanted to share my experience and how much worse it was than I expected.”

On Monday afternoon, the hospital issued a full statement to Eyewitness News:

“A patient treated at Texas Children’s Hospital West Campus tested positive for measles. This is a highly-contagious, vaccine-preventable infection. We know vaccination is the best protection against measles.

We work closely with public health entities to continuously monitor highly-contagious diseases in our local, national and international communities. Our Infection Control and Prevention team immediately identified other children who may have come in contact with this patient to assess their risk and provide clinical recommendations. We have contacted all of those families.

We are also aware that one of our nurses posted information on social media and we take these matters very seriously. A thorough investigation is underway.

Texas Children’s Hospital’s highest priority is the health and safety of those we serve. We will continue to keep our patients, their families, our staff and the community at-large informed to the fullest extent possible, while also respecting the privacy rights of our patients.”

“If you don’t believe in vaccines, you probably shouldn’t go into pediatrics and you would be warned of that, that this is the standard and if you don’t believe in the standard, you should probably go into another practice,” said professor Rebecca Lunstroth of the University of Texas. 

Texas experienced just one measles case in 2016, however in 2018 seven people contracted the disease. The toddler at Children’s Hospital would make eight. 

Concerned parents making the choice to vaccinate their children must weigh the benefits of protection from both deadly and typically non-fatal diseases, against research pointing to adverse reactions in some patients – usually from metallic adjuvants which enhance the body’s immune response to the vaccine. 

A 2009 study from the University of British Columbia which injected mice with a human-equivalent dose of aluminum oxide found in some vaccines, observed that: “The multiple aluminum hydroxide injections of experiment 2 showed profound effects on motor and other behaviours as shown in Figs. 4 and 5. Multiple aluminum injections produced significant behavioural outcomes including changes in locomotive behaviour, (Fig. 4) and induced memory deficits on water maze tasks (Fig. 5).”

And a 2013 study conducted by Israeli and Italian researchers focusing on Gulf War Syndrome and other Autoimmune/inflammatory Syndrome Induced by Adjuvants (ASIA) conditions, found that adjuvants were “found to induce autoimmunity by themselves both in animal models and in humans,” particularly for people predisposed to autoimmune issues. 

“For instance, silicone was associated with siliconosis, aluminum hydroxide with postvaccination phenomena and macrophagic myofasciitis syndrome,” reads the abstract. 

Most medical professionals and pro-vaccine groups, however, point to the wide array of “vaccine-preventable diseases” which have killed tens of thousands of people – primarily influenza and to a lesser extent, Hepatitis B. 

As such, many parents have requested that vaccinations be offered “a la carte” so that their children can be vaccinated against deadly diseases, while skipping largely-survivable “childhood inconveniences.”

Regardless of one’s stance on vaccines, it’s clearly inadvisable for medical professionals to openly oppose them.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2POe7HO Tyler Durden

President Donald Trump threatened that he could begin joint military exercises with South Korea and Japan that will be “far bigger than ever” if progress stalls on North Korea nuclear talks. Trump also blamed Beijing for the lack of progress on North Korea’s denuclearization, saying China has put North Korea “under tremendous pressure” in response to the trade war Trump between the two nations.

The president issued the warning in a series of tweets on Wednesday afternoon which he described as a White House statement, after complaining that China was hindering the negotiations due to trade disputes with the U.S.

The White House statement, said that the US President “feels strongly” that Pyongyang has been a subject of “tremendous pressure from China because of our major trade disputes with the Chinese Government” and went on to allege that Beijing continues to provide various types of assistance to the North, including “money, fuel, fertilizer and various other commodities.”thus effectively undermining the US policy of “maximum pressure.”

The White House statement asserted that China is providing Pyongyang with “considerable aid, including money, fuel, fertilizer and various other commodities.”

STATEMENT FROM THE WHITE HOUSE

President Donald J. Trump feels strongly that North Korea is under tremendous pressure from China because of our major trade disputes with the Chinese Government. At the same time, we also know that China is providing North Korea with…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 29, 2018

Despite the White House’s failure to reach progress in implementing the loosely worded agreement between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and Trump, reached at the bilateral summit in June, the statement stresses that Trump believes his relationship with Kim is a “very good and warm one, and there is no reason at this time to be spending large amounts of money on joint US-South Korea war games.”

…of money on joint U.S.-South Korea war games. Besides, the President can instantly start the joint exercises again with South Korea, and Japan, if he so chooses. If he does, they will be far bigger than ever before. As for the U.S.–China trade disputes, and other…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 29, 2018

…of money on joint U.S.-South Korea war games. Besides, the President can instantly start the joint exercises again with South Korea, and Japan, if he so chooses. If he does, they will be far bigger than ever before. As for the U.S.–China trade disputes, and other…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 29, 2018

The statement notes that should the need arise “the President can instantly start the joint exercises again,” both with South Korea and Washington’s other top regional ally, Japan. As with many things Trump, the restarted wargames would be “far bigger than ever before,” the US president warned.

After effectively accusing the Chinese government of foul play on the Korean peninsula, the statement then concludes by saying the bitter trade dispute between the US and China “will be resolved in time” by Trump and “China’s great President Xi Jinping.”

…differences, they will be resolved in time by President Trump and China’s great President Xi Jinping. Their relationship and bond remain very strong.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 29, 2018

Earlier Wednesday, Trump told reporters at the White House negotiations with North Korea are “doing well,” but “China makes it much more difficult.”

The statement comes after US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis indicated earlier this week that although several major US drills with South Korea had been suspended as an act of goodwill, the Pentagon has “no plans to suspend any more.”

In fact, according to South Korea’s JoongAng Ilbo, the U.S. and South Korea internally decided to hold annual air force exercise called Vigilent ACE in December.  U.S. military personnel from America and other overseas bases will participate in joint drill, the paper reported adding that the decision was made before Defense Sec. James Mattis said on Aug. 28 U.S. won’t suspend more joint military drills with South Korean forces.

Trump’s announcement comes just days after Trump called off a trip to North Korea by Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, saying there hadn’t been enough progress in talks aimed at denuclearizing the Korean peninsula. In a series of tweets Friday, Trump said Pompeo would likely return to North Korea after U.S. trade disputes with China were resolved.

North Korea, which has long been irritated by the joint wargames, recently accused Washington of “double-dealing.” The ruling party’s official newspaper reported that the US contingent stationed in Japan has been rehearsing an invasion into North Korea by “staging secret drills involving man-killing special units” while the White House has been “having a dialog with a smile on its face.”

While there has been little progress on North Korea since the milestone summit in June, no effort to end the escalating trade war between the US and China has borne fruit. The recent talks between American and Chinese officials ended without a breakthrough, and it was reported that no follow-up meetings have been scheduled. In the meantime, China vowed to respond “resolutely” to “the unreasonable measures” taken by the US.

The U.S. has been leaning heavily on China to help enforce tougher sanctions imposed last year against Kim Jong Un’s regime because the country is Pyongyang’s largest trading partner and shares a border with the isolated nation. China “is the route to North Korea,” Trump said Wednesday.

The trade war between the U.S. and China is primed to escalate further after their governments failed to make progress in two days of talks last week. The two sides had met with low expectations for the meetings and no further talks had been scheduled, a person familiar with the discussions said.

In the past week, while the two sides were talking, the U.S. slapped tariffs on a further $16 billion in Chinese imports. Retaliation by Beijing will bring the amount of trade affected by the dispute to $100 billion, with more to come. Looming now are new tariffs that Trump has threatened to impose on some $200 billion in annual imports from China, and Beijing’s already-promised retaliation.

“I don’t like to call it a trade war,” Trump said Wednesday according to Bloomberg.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2Nx1e3m Tyler Durden

Authored by Doug French via The Mises Institute,

In Episode 4, Season 3 of “Last Chance U,” Coach Jason Brown told his players, “Ignorance is life threatening, man.” The Independence Juco coach said, “Eighty-nine percent of NFL and NBA players are bankrupt three years after retirement.”

“I know you guys can’t comprehend half that shit,” the coach yells, referring to what is being taught in class. It doesn’t matter. He tells his players to go to class, sit in the front row, stay off their phones and, “you’ll get a C.”

He then admits on camera for Netflix and his players, “I didn’t learn one thing in high school or college.” After giving his players a few examples of things he doesn’t know, he said, “But, I’m a cold hustler.”

His message: “It’s a game.” Play football to get an education and a degree. Will you learn anything? Probably not. Crazy as it sounds, Dr. Bryan Caplan is on the same page as Coach Brown. What makes college worth it — signaling.

Caplan explains, “Graduation tells employers, ‘I take social norms seriously – and have the brains and work ethic to comply’. Quitting tells employers, ‘I scorn social norms – or lack the brains and work ethic to comply.’”

In his outstanding book The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and MoneyProfessor Caplan rejects the idea that all education teaches useful job skills and those job skills pay off in the labor market. Instead, we learn our job skills on the job. A degree signals that students have the discipline to suffer through the boredom to conform to what society expects and what employers want.

You don’t use history or math on the job, unless you are a math or history teacher. “First and foremost: from kindergarten on, students spend thousands of hours studying subjects irrelevant to the modern labor market,” writes Caplan.

Caplan teaches economics at George Mason. He says he has a dream job. “I go to class and talk to students about my exotic interests: everything from the market for marriage, to the economics of the Mafia, to the self-interested voter hypothesis.”

He can train Ph.D. students to be economics instructors, but the rest? “I can’t teach what I don’t know.” Most of Caplan’s students will go on to have careers far away from economics.

Getting an A in European Literature doesn’t matter to an employer. What matters is degree holders’ “grasp of and submission to social expectations.” That degree from Wherever University shows you’re a team player, you’re deferential to superiors, you dress the part, you act the part, you’re not a racist or sexist, and your employer won’t “have to tell a modern model worker what’s socially acceptable case by case.”

Caplan gives it to the reader straight:

“Hiring decisions, like all business decisions, are about prudence, not proof. People at the top of their class usually have the trifecta: intelligent, conscientious, and conformist.”

M.I.T. has been giving away classes online for years. The degree you have to pay for. Caplan makes a compelling case that the reported demise of traditional brick-and-mortar universities is unlikely. Sure, online courses are cheaper. However, for a student to prove his or her conformist chops, attending in person gives a stronger signal than completing online classes in your mom’s basement. Caplan makes the point that “life isn’t a game of solitaire. Schools build discipline by making students show up on time, sit still, keep their mouths shut, follow orders, and stay awake.”

Think about what the average employee does? School prepares the student for “doing boring work in a hierarchical organization.”

Students don’t want skills, they want credentials. “Employers could have substituted standardized tests for traditional diplomas a century ago. They didn’t,” Caplan writes.

Caplan spends much of the book debunking the human capital theory of education. Students never complain when an instructor cancels class, but if instructors were truly building student’s human capital, students would demand a refund for every cancelled class and the knowledge capital they should have received during that class period.

“Do we really transform waiters into economic consultants — or merely evaluate whether waiters have the right stuff to be economic consultants?” Caplan wonders.

So, are high school and college grads literate?

Over half of high school graduates and nearly 20 percent of college grads are not at an intermediate level of literacy and numeracy. No wonder “high culture requires extra mental effort to appreciate — and most humans resent mental effort.” Americans spend only about $100 a year on reading materials, and “despite years of study, most adults are historically illiterate.”

There is a lack of skilled labor in America and Kaplan’s Chapter 8 is entitled “We Need More Vocational Education.” There are hundreds of thousands of jobs available for plumbers, carpenters and auto mechanics, while only a few writers and historians are needed. A generation of skilled tradesmen are unemployed or malemployed with business degrees. Parents need to realize that if their child is an average or poor student, they will likely not graduate from college and should pursue vocational school.

As for politics Kaplan explains, “in politics, critical thinking is an act of charity.” Falsehoods become popular because humans gravitate toward ideas that sound good. It’s called Social Desirability Bias because it’s easier to tell people what they want to hear. Politicians appeal to voters’ wishful thinking.

This election season, every politician says more money is needed for education. Kaplan’s point is less should be spent, especially on poor students. The United States is over-educated, providing a low social return. Politicians are too dumb to realize it.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2PkAvaV Tyler Durden

For years it has been common knowledge that China takes delight in cooking its economic books. Perhaps the most notorious example is the long-standing problem with the country’s GDP figures, where the combined provincial figures do not tally with the National Bureau Of Statistics’ national total (we discussed this most recently in “Data Fraud At Chinese Province Suggests Local GDP Numbers As Much As 20% “Overcooked“).

And while to Beijing painting the economy in a perpetually favorable light – China’s GDP is notoriously the least volatile of all economic metrics – the calculations by China’s National Bureau of Statistics are vital for understanding and shaping policy towards the world’s second largest economy, including the basis on which it can be described as such.

“In an authoritarian system there is definitely an incentive for statistics officials to publish data that will please the government. At the same time, however, economic policy that is based on unreliable data can only be deficient and thus leads to outcomes that will not please the government,” said Carsten Holz, professor of economics from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, who has closely studied Chinese statistics for years.

Now a new set of concerns about “cooked” numbers has emerged and it centers on areas such as profits from large industrial companies, retail sales, electricity consumption, coal output, and company revenues in cultural and related industries.

Here, as SCMP reports, one of the “perplexing” issues is that the NBS has traditionally reported positive year-on-year growth rates in percentage terms, while growth in absolute yuan terms has been negative. This deviation, which barely happened in the past, has reinforced scepticism over the quality of the “data” and fuelled the suspicion that the NBS generates data outcomes that match the policy goals of the Chinese government leadership.

For example, in July, profits from industrial enterprises with more than 20 million yuan (US$2.9 million) in revenues rose 16.2% Y/Y, according to the NBS. But comparing this year’s absolute yuan levels with last year’s, profits dropped by 15.92%, according to calculations by the South China Morning Post. The data makes no sense on either a snapshot or total basis, as cumulatively, the profits grew 17.1% year on year in the first seven months, according to the official data, but fell 8.1 % in absolute terms.

In footnotes in its data report, the NBS explained that it only compared firms that were included in the data sample both this year and the same time last year. The bureau adjusts its sample periodically during the year, adding or deleting companies depending on whether they rise above or fall below the minimum revenue threshold. In the most glaring example of how to report “Non-GAAP” economic data, Chinese firms that are in only one sample appear to have been stripped out of the calculation, though the revisions in the samples used are not made public.

At the end of 2016, the number of industrial firms with revenues above the threshold stood close to 400,000. And yet, at the end of June, the NBS sample contained 59,000 companies as opposed to 54,000 during the same period last year.

Here too we find the same fudge: these companies’ operating revenues rose by 9.9% Y/Y officially but dropped by 3% in absolute terms.

Such methodology has drawn scorn from some observers for having special “Chinese characteristics” that are not used in other major countries.

And while it is no secret that Chinese economic data are notoriously manipulated, at least in the past Beijing has taken measures to avoid public examples of “two sets of books” showing different results.  One China economist close to the NBS told the SCMP there has been an internal debate over the clarification of data discrepancies.

Hardly surprising, the economist said it was very likely the NBS lowered last year’s base figures to make this year’s profit growth rate from industrial firms higher in percentage terms, the economist said. The revisions form part of a campaign to clean false data from local authorities, who have been inclined to inflate figures to gain more fiscal support from the central government.

Based on calculations by the Post, the provinces and regions that inflated their industrial profit data by more than 30% last year include Tianjin, Hebei, Inner Mongolia, Jilin, Jiangxi, Shandong, and Guangxi. The result is hardly surprising because some of those provinces in question had already been exposed for forging data. For example, the Binhai New Area, an economic zone in Tianjin, was exposed for having inflated its 2016 GDP growth by a third.

* * *

Another example of the NBS “cleaning up” local data is the plunging growth of fixed-asset investment (FAI), which until recently was the biggest part of China’s GDP. During the first seven months of this year, figures show investment by state-controlled firms and private ones increased by 1.5 per cent and 8.8 per cent respectively, compared to 10 per cent and 6 per cent for the whole year of 2017.

“How can the partial year 2018 data have such an extreme flip compared to 2017? It is not credible that state FAI is growing at only one-sixth the pace of the private one, the lowest ratio ever, especially when the press is filled with stories on the difficulties of private firms getting bank loans,” Nicholas Lardy, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said.

“For the FAI data, they are beginning to wring out some of the vast overstatement of capital formation so the per cent change reported most recently is calculated against a prior number that has been adjusted.”

As we reported at the time, a 2015 study from the Rhodium Group found that because of different data reporting systems, local authorities tended to overstate growth, which it turn made the central government adjust its national calculations in an attempt to factor this in.

Anecdotally, in the past the NBS has tried different ways of containing local data misreporting, such as embedding tracking chips in excavators and other construction equipment to measure their operating times, which can be compared with reported data on construction activity.

But it’s not just local government fabricating their output to Beijing: even inside the NBS, there is a mistrust of the data generated by different departments. According to the 2015 Rhodium study, the department that calculates the headline figures does not trust the information provided by its own industrial statistics department, which compiles data directly reported by individual firms.

“The statistical system is target-driven, so if consumer spending is targeted to grow at 10 per cent, say, then the statistics collectors make adjustments in order to reach 10 per cent.

“That might [cause the NBS to] change the number of companies being sampled, change the standards for inclusion in the samples, or even (in a case we ran into) call companies and suggest that they reduce last year’s numbers to create a more attractive comparison,” Anne Stevenson-Yang, co-founder of J Capital Research said.

In short: China’s data has long been goalseeked to be whatever “someone” in Beijing orders it to be.

Aware of this, economists have resorted to other indicators, such as monitoring satellite images of the intensity of artificial night lights or rises and fall in energy consumption, to monitor the country’s economic activity.

Amazingly, even this data is now being gamed: last month, China’s National Energy Administration said the country’s primary industry (the official term for the agriculture sector) used 6.5 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in June, an increase of 6.6 per cent from the same month in 2017. But compared with the figures reported last June, that represented a drop of about 46 per cent.

Caught lying and in the face of intense public suspicion, the agency later admitted that its calculations were based on a lower figure for last year, which excluded some support services based on a new definition of the agricultural sector.

It is the lack of transparency into data calculation methodology that most annoys economists. While NBS chief Ning now says China’s official data is comparable to that of other countries, its reporting standards have yet to catch up with global standards. In short, when it comes to the economic data meant to validate the “second biggest economy” in the world, China is nothing more than a banana republic.

Of course, the simplest solution would be for China to adopt apples to apples proforma numbers, using the old methodology to represent a given data point, something which other nations like the US do. “Indeed the US economy is less volatile than China’s and its local data is more accurate,” the economist close to the NBS said.

The economist said this raised the question why the NBS could not disclose its margin of error or release two sets of data using both the old and new methodology.

“I have repeatedly asked them about this, and they say they can’t. I asked why. They said ‘why invite confusion as it would take lots of effort to explain to laymen why you published two numbers?’.”

Indeed, why admit you lied?

via RSS https://ift.tt/2wsARF8 Tyler Durden

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

Experts from numerous countries around the globe are gathering for a United Nations meeting to discuss “killer robots.” The weeklong event that opened Monday is the second at the U.N. offices in Geneva and will focus on lethal autonomous weapons systems.

Futuristic robots that can conduct war without human intervention is a big concern among officials in the United Nations, according to a report by ABC News. The experts who have gathered for the meeting will discuss ways to define and “deal with” the problems that could arise from the creation of “killer robots.”

Although U.N. officials say that in theory, fully autonomous, computer-controlled weapons don’t exist yet, and the debate is still in its infancy, the discussion is all but mandatory as the experts and officials have often grappled with the very basic definitions. The United States has argued that it’s premature to establish a definition of such systems, much less regulate them, but the meeting will focus largely on those aspects.

Other experts and some of the top advocacy groups say governments and militaries should be prevented from developing such systems, which have sparked fears and led some critics to envision harrowing scenarios about their potential uses.

As the meeting got underway, Amnesty International urged countries to work toward a ban.

Killer robots are “no longer the stuff of science fiction,” Rasha Abdul Rahim, an artificial intelligence researcher for the human rights organization, said. Rahim warned that technological advances are outpacing international law.

Part of the trouble for activists, however, is that the U.N.-backed conference that convened the meeting works by consensus. A single participating country – like a big military power – therefore could scuttle efforts to reach an international ban. –ABC News

And who is to say that a ban will stop the future use of killer robots anyway?  If a country decided to use them despite the ban, ink on paper will be meaningless.

Amandeep Gill, who is chairing the meeting and a former Indian ambassador to the U.N.-backed Conference on Disarmament, said that he personally believes progress is being made on the issue. He said all of the countries generally fall into three camps of thought: One seeks a formal, legal ban on such weapons; another wants a political, but non-binding agreement; and a third wants no changes at all. “We are coming closer to an agreement on what should be the guiding principles — guiding the behavior of states and guiding the development and deployment of such systems around the world,” Gill told reporters Monday. “And this is not an insignificant outcome.”

“There is a lot of movement within the governments,” said Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jody Williams. “We’re up to 26 now that have called for a ban,” said Williams, who won the 1997 Nobel for her work against landmines. “Logic would dictate — at least in my thinking — that there would be a mandate toward negotiating a binding instrument, and that’s what we’re pushing for here this week.”

At a news conference hosted by the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, Williams said the group wants “meaningful human control” when it comes to the use of military weapons. 

They also want to progress toward a ban on all computer-controlled weapons systems… so back to slings and arrows?

via RSS https://ift.tt/2N2yYsf Tyler Durden

With massive coffee and sugar inventories already weighing on the softs market, the reinvigorated emerging market crisis has created a “perfect storm,” encouraging local producers in countries such as Brazil and Colombia to boost sales which fetch dollars in return, said Julio Sera, risk management consultant for INTL FCStone in Miami.

In fact, the Bloomberg Softs Subindex, which measures returns for those commodities plus cotton, tumbled to a record low…

However, with speculative positioning in sugar and coffee at or near all-time record net short, the worst could be over. (the softs are a close proxy for emerging markets, but with elevated covering risks). As Bloomberg Intelligence details below:

Further declines in the softs are highly dependent on a weaker Brazilian real and sugar. The worst is likely over for sugar, down over 30% in 2018. Recovery is highly dependent on similar weakness in the real, down about 20% vs. the U.S. dollar this year. Short sugar has been the proper position, but with prices near a 10-year low at key 10-cents-a-pound support and net short positions leading all major commodities, covering risks are quite elevated.

Sugar futures’ managed-money net positions are close to being the most short in the database since 2006 at 150,341. Next in line is soft companion coffee, at 104,336 as of Aug. 28. Brazil sugar supply estimates from CONAB, Brazil’s food statistics agency, are the lowest since 2009. Supply is unlikely to increase until prices do.

Short has been the right position in coffee futures, but covering risks are about as elevated as they get. Prices dipping to a 12-year low in August probably reflect about the worst of the substantial increase in Brazilian supply and the currency’s drop. Net managed-money short futures positions have consistently set records in 2018. Recently, their velocity has accelerated at the greatest pace on record since 2006. Net shorts have increased over 66,000 since the end of May, the most in any similar period.

New shorts are weighing on prices but are ripe for cleansing.

Pressuring prices are the real’s 20% decline vs. the dollar in 2018 to Aug. 28 and the record increase in Brazil coffee production. CONAB estimates production climbing to 20% above the five-year average, the most in the database since 2001.

So is the worst really over for softs and/or EM FX? The extreme correlation of the two will need to shatter if so.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2Pi3Pie Tyler Durden

Via SaraCarter.com,

Adam Lovinger, a former Defense Department analyst, never expected that what he stumbled on during his final months at the Pentagon would expose an integral player in the FBI’s handling of President Donald Trump’s campaign and alleged Russia collusion.

Lovinger, a whistleblower, is now battling to save his career. The Pentagon suspended his top-secret security clearance May 1, 2017, when he exposed through an internal review that Stefan Halper, who was then an emeritus Cambridge professor, had received roughly $1 million in tax-payer funded money to write Defense Department foreign policy reports, his attorney Sean Bigley said. Before Lovinger’s clearance was suspended he had taken a detail to the National Security Council as senior director for strategy. He was only there for five months before he was recalled to the Pentagon, stripped of his prestigious White House detail, and ordered to perform bureaucratic make-work in a Pentagon annex Bigley calls “the land of misfit toys.” His security clearance was eventually revoked in March 2018, despite the Pentagon “refusing to turn over a single page of its purported evidence of Lovinger’s wrongdoing,” Bigley stated. Conservative watchdog group, Judicial Watch, recently filed a federal lawsuit against the Defense Department to obtain the withheld records.

Lovinger also raised concerns about Halper’s role in conducting what appeared to be diplomatic meetings with foreigners on behalf of the U.S. government because his role as contractor forbids him from doing so, according to U.S. federal law.

An investigation by SaraACarter.com reveals that the documents and information Lovinger stumbled on and other documents obtained by this news site, raise troubling questions about Halper, who was believed to have worked with the CIA and part of the matrix of players in the bureau’s ‘CrossFire Hurricane’ investigation into Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Halper, who assisted the FBI in the Russia investigation, appears to also have significant ties to the Russian government, as well as sources connected directly to President Vladimir Putin.

Halper did not respond to requests for comment.

“When Mr. Lovinger raised concerns about DoD’s misuse of Stefan Halper in 2016, he did so without any political designs or knowledge of Mr. Halper’s spying activities,” Bigley told SaraACarter.com.

“Instead, Mr. Lovinger simply did what all Americans should expect of our civil servants: he reported violations of law and a gross waste of public funds to his superiors.”

And for that, Bigley said, Lovinger has paid the ultimate price in his 12-year career as a strategist in the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment. According to Bigley, shortly after Lovinger began reporting and asking questions about suspicious contracts given to Halper and others, including one person closely associated Chelsea Clinton, his security clearance was suspended. Later, on April 3, 2018, the DoD’s Washington Headquarters Services Director Barbara Westgate sent a letter to Lovinger indefinitely suspending him from duty and pay status after his clearance was removed in March. The letter stated, “The purpose of this memorandum is to notify you that I am proposing to indefinitely suspend you from duty and pay status in your position as a Foreign Affairs Specialist.”

Lovinger, who is married with three children and is the family’s primary breadwinner, has been living off the generosity of family members since his pay was removed.

The retaliation for whistleblowing was something Bigley expected. “So, we weren’t surprised when DoD bureaucrats moved shortly thereafter to strip Mr. Lovinger of both his security clearance and his detail to the National Security Council, where he had been Senior Director for Strategy as a by-name request of the incoming Trump Administration,” said the attorney.

“Yet, we were puzzled by the unprecedented ferocity of efforts to discredit Mr. Lovinger, including leaks from DoD of false and defamatory information to the press,” he said. “Our assumption was that the other contractor about whom Mr. Lovinger explicitly raised concerns – a close confidante of Hillary Clinton – was the reason for the sustained assault on Mr. Lovinger, and that certainly may have played a role.”

Bigley suspects it was more than the Clinton-connected contracts adding, “Mr. Lovinger unwittingly shined a spotlight on the deep state’s secret weapon – Stefan Halper – and threatened to expose the truth about the Trump-Russia collusion narrative than being plotted: that it was all a set-up.”

Halper’s Ties to Russian Officials Raise Serious Questions

Halper has had a long career and worked in government with several GOP administrations. At 73, the elusive professor spent a career developing top-level government connections–not just through academia but also through his work with members of the intelligence apparatus.

Those contacts and the information Halper collected along the way would eventually, through apparent circumstance, become utilized by the FBI against the Trump campaign. But, it was during his time hosting the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar at the University of Cambridge where Halper shifted from a professor and former government consultant to FBI informant on the Trump campaign.

In 2016, Halper was an integral part of the FBI’s investigation into short-term Trump campaign volunteer, Carter Page. Halper first made contact with Page at his seminar in July 2016. Page, who was already on the FBI’s radar, was accused of being sympathetic to Russia and sought better relations between the U.S. and Russian officials. Halper stayed in contact with Page until September 2017.

During that time, the FBI sought and obtained a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to spy on Page and used Halper to collect information on him, according to sources. The House Intelligence Committee Russia report and documents obtained by this outlet revealed that the bulk of the warrant against Page relied heavily on an unverified dossier compiled by Former British Spy Christopher Steele and the matter is still under congressional investigation. Steele, who was a former MI6 agent, also had ties to many of the same people, like former MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove, who were part of the seminar.

Stefan Halper

Halper, along with Dearlove, left the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar in December 2016, saying they were concerned about Russian influence. Halper had told reporters at the time that it was due to “unacceptable Russian influence.”

Ironically, documents obtained by SaraACarter.com suggest that Halper also had invited senior Russian intelligence officials to co-teach his course on several occasions and, according to news reports, also accepted money to finance the course from a top Russian oligarch with ties to Putin.

Several course syllabi from 2012 and 2015 obtained by this outlet reveal Hapler had invited and co-taught his course on intelligence with the former Director of Russian Intelligence Gen. Vladimir I. Trubnikov.

On May 4, 2012, the course syllabus states, “Ambassador Vladimir I. Trubnikov will comment on the challenges faced while directing the Foreign Intelligence Service, his tenure as Ambassador to India, President Putin and the likely course of Russia’s relations with Britain and the U.S.”

In May 2015, Trubnikov returned to teach with Halper at his seminar in Cambridge on “current relations between the Russian Federation and the West.” Other notable intelligence experts attended the event in 2015, including Major Gen.Peter Williams, a former British commander of the mission to the Soviet Forces in Germany.

Halper’s partner in the seminar, Cambridge Professor Neil Kent has also espoused better relations with Russia and Putin in his writings and told Russia Today in a 2014 interview that “everyone is attacking and demonizing Russia.” According to Kent’s biography, he was a professor from 2002 to 2012 at Russia’s St. Petersburg State Academic Institute.

Even more interesting are reports from the British Media outlet, The Financial Times, that state Halper received funds for the Cambridge seminar from Russian billionaire Andrey Cheglakov, who has close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Cheglakov also funded Veruscript in 2016, which raised the suspicion of Dearlove and those connected to the seminar. Veruscript, a publisher for a Russian academic journal, was suspected by MI6 of being a front for Russian intelligence. Kent also happened to be the editor and chief of the journal. He published the inaugural article in the journal “The Journal of Intelligence and Terrorism”  blaming the West for the Russian invasion into Crimea but the journal closed down due to their suspicions.

Dearlove was also concerned “that Russia may be seeking to use the seminar as an impeccably credentialed platform to covertly steer debate and opinion on high-level sensitive defense and security topics,” according to the Financial Times sources.

A former senior intelligence official told this news outlet, “It’s all smoke and mirrors. Halper was well aware when he was bringing in Trubnikov in 2012 that the Russian’s were already there at his invitation. The FBI uses Halper to get more information on Trump aides but it’s Halper who has the real connection to Russia.”

Lovinger raised concerns with top officials at the Pentagon in 2016 and noted that Halper went far beyond his work as a contractor after he discovered that the amount of money the professor was being paid for his research did not make sense. Lovinger stressed his concern that Halper was not just being utilized as a contractor, but that he was also conducting diplomatic work for the Pentagon “in violation of federal law,” according to Bigley.

In one email from Stephan Halper to Andrew May, the second highest ranking official in Lovinger’s office, Halper writes about a planned trip to conduct meetings in India.

“I am in Cambridge en route to India – arriving Saturday. So far 14 meetings have been scheduled with various parts of the political-military community. On Monday, a meeting is planned with the Delhi Policy Group where I will meet with Brigadier Seghal who is, apparently working with ONA (Office of Net Assessment) Can you tell me anything about him,” according to the document obtained by SaraACarter.com.

Halper and George Papadopoulos

Halper was not only spying on Page for the FBI in 2016, but he had also made contact in September 2016 with another Trump campaign volunteer, George Papadopoulos. He invited Papadopoulos to London that September, luring him with a  $3,000 paycheck to work on a research paper under contract.  By this time the young Trump campaign volunteer had already been in contact London-based professor, Josef Mifsud, who had basically informed him that the Russians had damaging material about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Misfud’s role has also come into question by Congress.

Eventually, Papadopoulos was swept into Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel investigation and pled guilty to one count of lying to the FBI. His wife, Simona Papadopoulos, who’s been a vocal advocate for her husband, told SaraACarter.com that essentially he was forced to plead guilty because of threats from Mueller’s team and lack of financial resources.

After testifying behind closed doors last month to the House Intelligence Committee, Simona told this outlet that she testified to Congress “as far as George is concerned, he met with individuals following the same pattern of behavior….and all of a sudden (Halper) was asking if he was doing anything with Russians…. This is the case with Halper, who is now proven to be a spy, possibly with (Australian Ambassador) Alexander Downer” who her husband met with in London.

Halper and Michael Flynn 

Before Page and Papadopolous, there was the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. Flynn had been invited to Cambridge in February, 2014 for a a dinner hosted by both Dearlove and Halper.

But during that time, Flynn was already walking a fine line with the Obama Administration and battling President Obama and the CIA over his deep disagreement with the administration’s narrative that al-Qaeda and extremists groups, had been defeated or were on the run. Several months later Flynn was forced to resign early and ended his tenure as the director of the DIA.

Stefan Halper

“Flynn was pushed out by Obama and then became a thorn in the side of Obama and the Clintons when he joined the Trump campaign,” said a former senior intelligence source with knowledge of what happened. “The investigation into Trump didn’t start with Carter Page or George Papadapolous, but with Flynn. Flynn was already on the CIA and Clinton target list. Those same people sure as hell didn’t want him in the White House and they sure as hell didn’t want Trump to win.”

Flynn’s career with Trump ended as quickly as it came. He was forced to resign as Trump’s National Security Advisor 27 days after taking the job. The highly classified conversation between Flynn and former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak was leaked to the Washington Post in January 2017 and he was later questioned by the FBI on that conversation. According to former FBI Director James Comey, the agents who interviewed Flynn did not believe he was lying, but in the end, Flynn pled guilty to one count of lying to Special Counsel Robert Mueller. He had already spent more than $1 million in lawyers fees and sold his home to help with the debt. According to sources, Flynn’s family was being threatened by the Mueller team.

Halper’s involvement in the bureau’s investigation started much earlier than the FBI’s opening of its Crossfire investigation into the Trump campaign on July 31, 2016. He was already providing information on Page, Papadopolous, and Flynn earlier that year.

And it was in 2016 when Halper had told the FBI that he witnessed concerning interactions between Russian academic, Svetlana Lokhova, and Flynn at the February 2014 seminar dinner. This suspicion – without any proof – was then leaked to papers in London and eventually discussed in the U.S. media.  Lokhova told the BBC in May 2017 that when she first saw the allegations raised in the media she thought it was a joke.

Numerous sources with knowledge of the allegations Halper made about Flynn, said that they were “absolutely” false and that Flynn and Lokhova only spoke for a short time at the dinner. Several email exchanges between Lokhova, Flynn and his assistant that took place after the dinner were generic in nature, as Flynn had asked her for a copy of a historical 1930s postcard she had brought to the seminar.

“But it didn’t matter that it wasn’t the truth,” said the former senior intelligence official.

“It was already out there because of Halper’s allegations and the constant leaking and lying of false stories of those to the media.”

via RSS https://ift.tt/2Pe3q02 Tyler Durden

California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill on Tuesday which will eliminate bail for suspects arrested on all but the most violent felonies, reports the Sacramento Bee. Eligible suspects will be let go within 12 hours of booking, according to the new legislation, which can be extended another 12 hours if officials need more time to determine whether suspects should be held for other reasons. 

The passage of Senate Bill 10, which takes effect in October 2019, makes California the first state in the nation to remove the financial burden from pretrial release. 

“Today, California reforms its bail system so that rich and poor alike are treated fairly,” Brown said in a statement.

Under Senate Bill 10, California will replace bail with “risk assessments” of individuals and non-monetary conditions of release. Counties will establish local agencies to evaluate any individual arrested on felony charges for their likelihood of returning for court hearings and their chances of re-arrest. –Sacramento Bee

Anyone who is considered a low risk to public safety will be released with the least restrictive non-monetary conditions applied. “Medium-risk” individuals can be held or released depending on local standards, while “High-risk” detainees would remain in custody until their arraignment – along with anyone who has previously committed certain sex crimes or violent felonies. Also exempt from the new no-bail law will be anyone arrested for a DUI for the third time in a decade, anyone already under supervision by the court system, and anyone who has violated court-mandated conditions of a pretrial release in the previous five years. 

Advocates of abolishing bail contend that too many Californians remain stuck in custody because they cannot afford to bail out, effectively creating an unequal system of justice based on wealth. Counties currently determine their own bail schedule by crime, and offenders can secure their release by paying the entire amount, to be returned at the conclusion of their case, or applying for a surety bond through companies that charge a 10 percent fee. –Sacramento Bee

“The essence of this measure is we’re going to look at people as people,” said Sen. Bob Hertzberg, a Los Angeles Democrat who is carrying the bill (SacBee).

via RSS https://ift.tt/2NwIFfR Tyler Durden

Submitted by PlanetFreeWill

A new study has found that a third of teenagers haven’t read a single book in the past year as internet aged activities dominate their lives.

The research also shows that a minute portion of sophomore aged teens are picking up newspapers to read up on the real world.

Researchers from San Diego State University analyzed four decades’ worth of data from an ongoing, nationally-based lifestyle survey studying teens, finding that twelfth-graders reported reading two fewer books each year in 2016 compared with 1976.

Approximately one-third of these teens did not read a book for pleasure in the year prior to the 2016 survey, nearly triple the number reported in the 1970s, the study finds.

“Bookworm teens have always been few and far between, but now they seem like a dying breed,” Daniel Steingold of Study Finds writes.

The meteoric rise of internet-based activities cannot be understated: between social media, texting, gaming, and surfing the web, the average high school senior spent six hours a day online in 2016 — double the time from a decade earlier. Eighth graders (4 hours a day) and tenth graders (5 hours a day) didn’t lag far behind.

Naturally, many of these hours have come at the expense of traditional media, including books, newspapers, and magazines. In the early 90s, a third of tenth graders reported reading the daily paper — this figure dropped to an astonishing two percent by 2016. During the late 70s, 60 percent of 12th graders read a book or magazine almost daily, but only 16 percent did by 2016.

According to Jean M. Twenge, the study’s lead author, the ability teens now have to jump between digital media, such as texting, web surfing and gaming potentially creates a burden on their ability to dive into long reads such as textbooks.

“Think about how difficult it must be to read even five pages of an 800-page college textbook when you’ve been used to spending most of your time switching between one digital activity and another in a matter of seconds,” Twenge said. “It really highlights the challenges students and faculty both face in the current era.”

The researchers also revealed that new aged digital media is also taking its toll on the amount of time teens are using television and watching movies.

Thirteen percent of eighth graders said they watched five or more hours of television per day in 2016, compared to 22% in the 1990s.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2MzDZt7 Tyler Durden

Bloomberg TV’s Romaine Bostick has put together a fascinating chart that looks at speculative risk sentiment in the futures market, by summing up net spec exposure in traditional risk-off assets: gold, 10-year Treasuries and the VIX:

The chart speaks for itself, but as Bloomberg’s Michael Regan explains, “the obvious takeaway is that positioning is all on one side of the boat and speculators are woefully unprepared for a major risk-off event, suggesting complacency may be reaching epidemic levels as equities break out to new highs.”

As we noted previously, speculators are record net short Treasuries…

Extremely net short precious metals…

 

And VIX speculators just can’t help themselves, despite losing an arm and/or leg in February…

As DoubleLine’s Gundlach noted “Massive increase this week in short positions…Could cause quite a squeeze.”

via RSS https://ift.tt/2olHXqP Tyler Durden