Tag: finance

California Votes To Ban Schools From Early Start Times To “Give Students More Sleep”

Not The Onion, but FOX reports on the latest absurdity to come out of California public schools:

California lawmakers voted Friday to bar middle and high schools from starting before 8:30 a.m., one of dozens of proposals debated in the Legislature on the final day of its legislative session.

The bill, SB328, reportedly passed by narrow margin in both chambers of the state legislature which late into the night considered a variety of topics and proposals just before a midnight deadline; and if signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown, it will go into effect in three years. 

School health advocates claim that early start times cut down on the number of hours of sleep teens get each night. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention figures cited by FOX, almost 80 percent of all California middle and high schools started earlier than 8:30 a.m. in 2012.

However, opponents of the bill say this is yet more nanny state action initiated by a far removed state assembly. “When it comes to education, the farther away the decisions are made from the classroom, the worse those decisions are,” Assemblyman Jose Medina, D-Riverside, said of the bill. 

Opponents say it’s a matter that should be in the hands of local school boards and not the state legislature, as only the former can be sensitive to needs of the local community. 

But proponents claim a later school start time will result in increased graduation rates throughout the state. Assemblyman Jay Obernolte was widely cited as saying, “This is the single most cost-effective thing we can do to improve high school graduation rates.”

The only exemption to the new law should it take effect are rural schools; and schools would further still have control over scheduling electives or “extra periods” before the regular school day begins. 

Of course, it should be obvious that if middle and high school students aren’t getting enough sleep at night, letting students sleep-in is likely to have zero impact considering the more significant and likelier variables leading to loss of sleep. 

First and foremost we can imagine that a later school start time will simply give teens more time to stay glued to their phones late into the night. Multiple studies of late have demonstrated correlation between unhealthy sleep patters and iPhone addiction. 

According to one recent study published by The Guardian, for example:

Teenagers’ late-night mobile phone use is harming their sleep and potentially their mental health, say researchers who advised that “physical boundaries” be set over use of such devices in the bedroom.

The report noted that multiple prior sleep studies had established the negative impact that screen time was having on young people, and explained further:

Teenagers who reported “constantly texting into the night” said when surveyed a year later, the problem had worsened. “It’s escalating – they’re highly invested in it … Some kids are staying up until 3am.”

But anyone simply looking around to observe teen habits hardly needs a formal research study to become aware of the problem. 

But California says the answer is: just let’em sleep in longer. 

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Progressives: The Real World Versus Neverland

Authored by David Stolinsky via The Gatestone Institute,

“Not to know what happened before you were born is to remain forever a child,” Cicero astutely observed. For many self-described progressives today, however, this seems not to be a drawback. On the contrary, like adolescents — insisting that they are grown-ups when their parents get in the way of their fun, but then running home for all their basic needs and creature comforts — such people seem to give no thought to the past and equally little to the future.

Many people like this are said to suffer from a “Peter Pan Syndrome“: the inability or unwillingness to grow up. In thought, they seem to lean to the political left. They want the government to take on the role of parent, even if that involves maxing out the country’s “credit cards,” so that even for a short time, they can live beyond what they earn.

Possibly in a hurry not to concern themselves with “dreary details,” they pressed for a huge health-care bill, passed in 2010, that forever changed how we receive − or do not receive − medical care. It seems the details of the bill were too time-consuming and complex for the world of tweets and sound bites for them to pay attention to what it actually contained. When the bill was being debated, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously said, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.”

Many of these children in adult bodies were told, and actually believed, that better health care for everyone, including an unlimited number of illegal immigrants, would be attainable at a low cost, if only the government were to run it. That Medicare and Medicaid, both of which the U.S. government currently runs — as well as the UK’s National Health Service — are going broke does not appear to have occurred to them. So they persist in their fantasy that government-controlled health care is not an ill but a cure.

Their fantasy is not restricted to the realm of health care. Many of these children in adult bodies believe that many, if not all, major aspects of the economy would be more efficient if the government ran them. This is in spite of the fact that the facilities currently run by the government — from the Department of Veterans Affairs to the Department of Motor Vehicles — are inefficient, unhelpful or sometimes even downright hostile — to the people they are meant to serve.

Many children in adult bodies also seem not to know that Socialism failed in the Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Romania, Albania, Bulgaria, China, North Korea, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and Cuba, and is now failing in Venezuela. Yet, illogically, they appear to believe that they themselves could make it work. The irrational wish is evidently stronger than rational arithmetic.

These victims of arrested emotional development seem to confuse good motives with good results. They want better health care for a greater number of people at a lesser cost; so they fantasize that they can achieve it without denying care to those who are too old, too sick or too expensive to receive it. They kind-heartedly want a “more equal distribution of wealth”; so they fantasize that they can maneuver it without penalizing and discouraging the productive members of society, while rewarding and encouraging the unproductive ones. Yet this is exactly what has happened wherever the redistribution of wealth was tried.

These people, like all of us, want to be liked; so they fantasize that if they treat others kindly, the behavior will be reciprocated. They refer respectfully to the unelected theocratic leader of Iran as “Supreme Leader,” even as oppressed Iranian demonstrators are arrested, beaten, tortured or killed.

Although bullies — from those who terrorize fellow students in the schoolyard, to those who commit terrorist acts against innocent people across the world — speak the language of hatred and force, children in adult bodies persist in their fantasy that if they and their government would only project appeasement and weakness, regimes such as that in Tehran would lay down their arms and hate-filled hegemonic aims. Hence, presumably, the support among progressives for the Iran nuclear deal that former President Barack Obama pushed through, without regard to its potential cost of a fully nuclear-capable Iran to America and the rest of the world after the deal expires.

These adults still clinging hard to their wishes seem to believe that crime is caused by poverty or other societal ills, and conclude that criminals are victims of society, such as Kathryn Michelle Steinle, who was shot to death in 2015 by illegal immigrant José Inés García Zárate. Garcia Zarate, a five-time deportee and drug offender. While Steinle met a cruel and untimely death, Garcia Zarate, not only was acquitted of murder and manslaughter, but aroused sympathy on the left.

These adults who apparently do not want to grow up call those who disagree with them “fascists” or “Nazis” — without knowing the history of either — yet accept as gospel any statements or actions, no matter how questionable, on the part of those who agree with their romanticized positions.

Like Peter Pan, these children wish to live in Neverland – a place that, in the real word, does not exist. Fictional characters, however, have the advantage of enjoying adventures with imaginary dangers. In the real world, unfortunately, people who never grow up may enjoy themselves for a time, but sooner or later the all-too-real dangers they had ignored, like an overstretched credit card, catch up with them. By the time their future is lost to them, it will be too late to wake up or rectify the situation. This means that the adults among us who acknowledge and take on the responsibilities of adulthood must be even more vigilant in exposing fantasies as child-like and preventing these daydreamers from doing even more damage than they already have done.

In the real world, people who never grow up may enjoy themselves for a time, but sooner or later the all-too-real dangers they had ignored, like an overstretched credit card, catch up with them. By the time their future is lost to them, it will be too late to wake up or rectify the situation. (Image sources: Pixabay, Wikimedia Commons)

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Russian Anti-Submarine Aircraft Arrive In Syria To Participate In Massive Naval Drills

On September 1, two Tu-142MK maritime reconnaissance and anti-submarine warfare (ASW) aircrafts of the Russian Naval Aviation arrived in the Hmeimim airbase in western Syria, according to SouthFront, citing Syrian pro-government activists. The two aircrafts were reportedly escorted by Su-35 warplanes.

Russian Tu-142MK maritime reconnaissance and anti-submarine warfare aircrafts
Su-35 escorts

The Tu-142MK has a combat radius of 6,500km and can fly as high as 12km. The maritime reconnaissance and ASW aircraft can be also armed with different types of torpedoes, bombs and anti-ship missiles, such as the advance Kh-35.

The two aircrafts are expected to participate in the ongoing massive drills of the Russian Navy in the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Syria, which will end on September 8. According to the Ministry of Defense of Russia, Russia has deployed its largest naval armada since the Syrian war amid mutual allegations of an imminent chemical attack, and includes 25 warships led by the Marshal Ustinov missile cruiser and 30 aircraft, including the strategic Tu-160 missile-carrying bombers are participating in the drills.

Currently, the following Russian military vessels are stationed in the Mediterranean near the Syrian coast according to Naval military observers:

  • CG Marshal Ustinov
  • DDG Severomorsk
  • DDG Yaroslav Mudryy
  • FFG Admiral Grigorovich
  • FFG Admiral Essen
  • FFL Pytlivyy
  • FSG Vyshniy Volochek
  • FSG Grad Sviyazhsk
  • FSG Velikiy Ustyug
  • LST Orsk
  • LST Nikolay Fil’chenkov
  • MS Turbinist
  • MS Valentin Pikul
  • SS Kolpino
  • SS Velikiy Novgorod

Local observers believe that the drills are a response to the U.S. and its allies, which threatened to carry out a new missile strikes on positions of the Damascus government. Russia had warned that the militants in northern Syria may stage a chemical attack to serve as a pretext for the new strike.

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Were Soviet “Mind Control” Weapons Used To Carry Out Mysterious US Embassy Attacks?

When the team of US doctors and scientists who examined the nearly three dozen US “diplomats” spies targeted by mysterious sonic attacks in Cuba and China published a largely inconclusive paper about their findings back in March, one of the most intriguing geopolitical mysteries in recent memory appeared to hit a dead end.

But more than six months later – and with barely more than two months to go until the midterm elections – the New York Times has clearly spotted an opportunity to revive the story (anything to sell a few newspapers, right?), but this time, with an irresistible, and extremely topical, twist.

According to what the NYT describes as a “secretive group of elite scientists” whom the federal government consults on matters of security, what were initially believed to be sonic attacks actually weren’t that at all. In fact, these scientists (and, as per the implication, the intelligence community) now believe the symptoms suffered by the victims are consistent with concentrated microwave attacks.

Embassy

And guess which world leader has worked hard to bolster his country’s relationships with both Cuba and China while pouring resources into research on exactly these types of psychoactive weapons?

The answer? Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Before the birth of modern Russia, the Soviet Union (where Putin honed his spycraft chops as a KGB agent) was believed to have developed microwave weapons, which the superpower’s military hoped to use as a covert weapon (and also as a tool for mind control).

Decades ago, American scientist Allan Frey discovered that concentrated microwaves could, when directed at the human head, create psychic sounds and sensations – a phenomenon that was later named the Frey effect. When precisely manipulated, the waves could produce the illusion of loud noises (ringing, buzzing, grinding) similar to the symptoms described by the American diplomats.

But while Frey’s research was largely ignored in the US, the Soviet Union took a keen interest, as the NYT recounts.

The Soviets took notice. Not long after his initial discoveries, Mr. Frey said, he was invited by the Soviet Academy of Sciences to visit and lecture. Toward the end, in a surprise, he was taken outside Moscow to a military base surrounded by armed guards and barbed-wire fences.

“They had me visiting the various labs and discussing the problems,” including the neural impacts of microwaves, Mr. Frey recalled. “I got an inside look at their classified program.”

Moscow was so intrigued by the prospect of mind control that it adopted a special terminology for the overall class of envisioned arms, calling them psychophysical and psychotronic.

Soviet research on microwaves for “internal sound perception,” the Defense Intelligence Agency warned in 1976, showed great promise for “disrupting the behavior patterns of military or diplomatic personnel.”

Furtively, globally, the threat grew.

The National Security Agency gave Mark S. Zaid, a Washington lawyer who routinely gets security clearances to discuss classified matters, a statement on how a foreign power built a weapon “designed to bathe a target’s living quarters in microwaves, causing numerous physical effects, including a damaged nervous system.”

Mr. Zaid said a N.S.A. client of his who traveled there watched in disbelief as his nervous system later unraveled, starting with control of his fingers.

And just in case you had any lingering doubts, here’s a photo of Putin with Cuban leader Raul Castro.

Putin

With the arms race in full swing, the US military eventually took an interest in the Frey effect as it sought to match the Soviets in the development of psychological methods and mind control.

The lead inventor said the research team had “experimentally demonstrated” that the “signal is intelligible.” As for the invention’s uses, an Air Force disclosure form listed the first application as “Psychological Warfare.”

The Navy sought to paralyze. The Frey effect was to induce sounds powerful enough to cause painful discomfort and, if needed, leave targets unable to move. The weapon, the Navy noted, would have a “low probability of fatalities or permanent injuries.”

In a twist, the 2003 contract was awarded to microwave experts who had emigrated to the United States from Russia and Ukraine.

Here’s some more background on Frey’s research that explores in greater detail how he discovered what’s become known as the “microwave auditory effect:”

Mr. Frey, a biologist, said he stumbled on the acoustic effect in 1960 while working for General Electric’s Advanced Electronics Center at Cornell University. A man who measured radar signals at a nearby G.E. facility came up to him at a meeting and confided that he could hear the beam’s pulses – zip, zip, zip.

Intrigued, Mr. Frey traveled to the man’s workplace in Syracuse and positioned himself in a radar beam. “Lo,” he recalled, “I could hear it, too.”

Mr. Frey’s resulting papers – reporting that even deaf people could hear the false sounds – founded a new field of study on radiation’s neural impacts. Mr. Frey’s first paper, in 1961, reported that power densities 160 times lower than “the standard maximum safe level for continuous exposure” could induce the sonic delusions.

His second paper, in 1962, pinpointed the brain’s receptor site as the temporal lobes, which extend beneath the temples. Each lobe bears a small region – the auditory cortex – that processes nerve signals from the outer and inner ears.

Investigators raced to confirm and extend Mr. Frey’s findings. At first they named the phenomenon after him, but eventually called it the microwave auditory effect and, in time, more generally, radio-frequency hearing.

The exact mechanics of the phenomenon remain unexplained, but scientists believe it has something to do with the temporal lobe.

Microwaves

Of course, as the NYT readily admits, the Russia connection is pure conjecture. The State Department said it hasn’t identified a culprit. But the case is full of unanswered questions – and, for what it’s worth, Frey, now an octogenarian, told the NYT that Russian involvement is certainly possible. Russia, Frey says, may have been deliberately trying to undermine the blossoming detente between the US and Cuba (though that wouldn’t explain the attacks on the US consulate in China).

At his home outside Washington, Mr. Frey, the scientist who uncovered the neural phenomenon, said federal investigators have questioned him on the diplomatic riddle and that microwave radiation is considered a possible cause.

Mr. Frey, now 83, has traveled widely and long served as a contractor and a consultant to a number of federal agencies. He speculated that Cubans aligned with Russia, the nation’s longtime ally, might have launched microwave strikes in attempts to undermine developing ties between Cuba and the United States.

“It’s a possibility,” he said at his kitchen table. “In dictatorships, you often have factions that think nothing of going against the general policy if it suits their needs. I think that’s a perfectly viable explanation.”

And that may be – but it’s certainly a pretty thin peg to hang a 3,000-word feature on.

But that obvious fact apparently didn’t faze the editors at the NYT. After all – as we’ve learned time and time again in recent years – Russia is the primary suspect by default.

Indeed, as the NYT has so eloquently explained, this too is Putin’s fault.

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Libya Chaos: Rockets Rain Down On Tripoli, Mass Prison Break Of 400, Week Of Street Battles

After we reported heavy inter-factional fighting within the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA)-controlled Tripoli last week, Libya’s capital city has only descended into further chaos and is quickly sliding toward full-on civil war. 

On Saturday a barrage of rockets rained down on the city center, reportedly striking residential homes and a popular hotel; and tanks continue to roam the streets amidst intensifying street-to-street fighting which after a week has left 40 dead, nearly half of those civilians, and four of those children. Local authorities also have cited over 100 wounded in battles that have often raged in the heart of residential areas in Tripoli’s southern districts.

And what’s more, the largest prison break in the country’s recent history occurred on Sunday, with some 400 detainees taking advantage of nearby fighting in southern suburbs to escape Ain Zara prison, according to the AFP. 

Aftermath of intense militia clashes in Tripoli this week. Via Nadia Ramadan/Twitter

The 15 or more rockets landing on the capital city and its surrounding environs over the weekend forced the suspension of all flights at Tripoli’s only operational airport. A state of emergency has been declared by the ruling GNA over the entirety of the capital area. 

Though post-Gaddafi Libya, long forgotten about in the media after its “liberation” by NATO and Islamist militants, has since 2011 existed in varying degrees of anarchy and chaos with up the four governments recently ruling different parts of the country, this past week has witnessed the worst unrest in Tripoli in years. 

Al Jazeera summarizes the factions involved and their motives in some of its latest coverage:

The fighting between the rival armed groups broke out earlier this week. Street battles on Monday and Tuesday pitted the Seventh Brigade, or Kaniyat, from Tarhouna, a town 65km southeast of Tripoli, against the Tripoli Revolutionaries’ Brigades (TRB) and the Nawasi, two of the capital’s largest factions.

The Kaniyat and other groups from outside Tripoli have noticed the success of rivals inside the city with growing unease. Reports about the wealth, power and extravagant lifestyles of some Tripoli rebel commanders have fuelled resentment.

So nearly seven years after Muammar Gaddafi’s field execution beside a ditch outside of Sirte in October 2011, the dozens of factions ruling the streets of Tripoli are still essentially fighting for the spoils of power. 

Local and international reports confirm that both sides of the fighting are loyal to the UN and internationally backed GNA. 

Smoke rising on airport road in Tripoli over during weekend fighting. 

In a joint statement released through the the French foreign ministry, Britain, France, Italy and the US condemned the violence as “attempts to weaken the legitimate Libyan authorities”.

“We are calling on the armed groups to immediately stop all military action and warn those who seek to undermine stability, in Tripoli or elsewhere in Libya, that they will be made accountable for it,” the statement added.

And on Sunday a massive prison break occurred in connection with the fighting, according to the AFP:

Some 400 detainees escaped after a riot on Sunday at a prison in the southern suburbs of the Libyan capital Tripoli, theatre of a week of deadly battles, the police said.

“The detainees were able to force open the doors and leave” as fighting between rival militias raged near the prison of Ain Zara, the police said in a statement, without specifying what crimes the escapees had committed.

Guards were unable to prevent the prisoners escaping as they feared for their own lives, the statement said.

Likely, many of the escaped prisoners will themselves join the fighting alongside rival factions, though most are reported to be former Gaddafi loyalists and petty criminals. 

Inside Ain Zara prison in Tripoli, scene of Sunday’s mass prison break. Image via AFP

The Government of National Accord (GNA) has long tried to bring its own armed factions, who are in real powers in de facto control of streets and checkpoints throughout the city, to heel.

The internationally backed government in Tripoli attempted to broker a short-lived ceasefire on Thursday. A subsequent official GNA statement blamed unnamed factions for “undermining the ceasefire … by blindly launching rockets and shells on Tripoli and its suburbs”.

Since the NATO-backed overthrow of Gaddafi in 2011, Libya has remained split between rival parliaments and governments in the east and west, with militias and tribes lining up behind each, resulting in fierce periodic clashes. 

Perhaps the most significant of these warring militias nationwide is Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army, which controls much of eastern Libya and is the chief rival to the GNA in the western half of the country. 

Haftar is reportedly poised to make a move on Libya’s vital “oil crescent region” while bolstering his forces with Chadian mercenaries, according to local reports.

ISIS also maintains a scattered presence in various parts of the country, claiming responsibility for a deadly attack on a security checkpoint as recently as a week ago in the western part of the country. Six soldiers loyal to the GNA were reportedly killed in that attack. 

Meanwhile the GNA continues to appear helpless to act as international pressure increases to stop the fighting: “We warn these gangs and outlawed groups that have terrorised civilians and residents; there is no space for such lawlessness and chaos,” the GNA’s Presidential Council said in a statemen early in the week. “We have given orders to the interior ministry to counter these attacks,” the statement said. 

Though the recently “liberated” Libya has remained conflict-prone after NATO and US forces promised an “Arab Spring”-style “blossoming of democracy” — things have clearly only gone from worse to worse as the capital now inches toward full blown civil war.

Welcome to the “new” Libya… where the US and UN recognized government is at war with itself. 

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Americans Are Grilling More Steaks For Labor Day In The “Greatest Economy Ever”

As consumer confidence explodes to an 18-year high, not seen since the dot-com bubble, Americans feel like they have got more money. Despite negative real wage growth for the bottom 90 percent, and consumer credit exploding higher as credit card debt hits record highs, the artificial feeling of the “greatest economy ever” could be seen in the demand for premium steaks.

The appearance of a bustling economy thanks to second-quarter growth numbers inflated by shifts in consumption to avoid upcoming tariffs and low unemployment in the gig-economy has sparked consumer demand for beef this summer, typically considered a delicacy food too many.

A few months back, we reported a mountain of meat is building in U.S. cold-storage facilities, spurred by a surge in production and President Trump’s trade war that is pressuring foreign demand.

More than 2.5 billion pounds of meat from beef, hog, poultry, and turkey are being stockpiled in cold-storage warehouses across the country amid trade disputes with major U.S. meat exporters. Federal data in July showed record meat levels which has sent the industry into a dangerous deflationary trend.

Deflation in meat prices have triggered increased consumer demand, but not at levels that are in pace with record production of chickens and hogs. The excess supply is generally exported to Mexico and China—among the biggest foreign buyers of U.S. meat — have both recently slapped tariffs on U.S. hog products in response to President Trump’s tariffs on steel, aluminum, and other items. Industry officials told the WSJ that U.S. hams, chops and livers have become more expensive in international markets, coupled with a strong dollar weighing on local currencies, which has dramatically reduced demand for U.S. meats.

America’s meat industry production is rapidly filling up the specialized warehouses built to store meat. “We are packed full,” said Joe Rumsey, president of Arkansas-based Zero Mountain Inc.

Record supplies of chicken and pork in the U.S., and spot prices at 3 to 4-year lows has overwhelmed demand. Companies including Tyson Foods Inc. and Sanderson Farms Inc. have recently said with meat prices in decline, Americans have been gravitating towards beef products — putting pressure on the poultry industry.

“Margins for retailers are great, and consumers are back into beef now that prices are better,” said Will Sawyer, an economist at Greenwood Village, Colorado-based CoBank, who spoke with Bloomberg. “Chicken, which had been the recession special for so long, is having to take a back seat to the more pricey protein.”

Bloomberg believes Americans’ increased demand for burgers and steaks partly because they have been deprived.

“A drought caused ranchers to reduce herds to a six-decade low in 2014, and beef prices shot up to an all-time high. The meat was so expensive it forced consumers to cut back, with consumption declining to the lowest since the 1970s. Now, even with cheaper prices and bigger supplies, demand still hasn’t bounced back to where it was before the recession, Sawyer said. That means there’s still plenty of room for increased buying,” said Bloomberg.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, beef consumption among Americans will rise 1.4 percent this year to 57.7 pounds on a per-capita basis. Government officials forecast that demand will grow to 58.7 pounds next year.

Hedge funds have taken notice of the latest beef craze. As of August 28, professionals had a cattle net-long position of 62,165 futures and options, according to U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Gary Morrison, a commodity researcher Urner Barry, told Bloomberg that increased demand by retailers with good margins have allowed them to discount prices for fancier cuts of meat — allowing consumer demand to perk up.

As Labor Day grillers fill up their propane tanks and prepare their backyards for American festivities, the deflationary collapse in meat prices via record stockpiles in cold storage facilities has been remarkably beneficial to the broke American consumer.

So is surging beef demand really a symbol of a roaring economy, or is it that a deflationary collapse in prices has found the sweet spot (equilibrium) of where beef is now affordable once more?

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Will Someone In Washington Play The Ace Of Spades Before November?

Authored by James George Jatras via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

With regard to American foreign and security policy, President Donald Trump presents a paradox. Aside from some harsh bluster (“fire and fury” directed towards Pyongyang in the lead-up to an unprecedented US-North Korea summit), Trump generally seems to want more peaceful ties with the rest of the world and an end to wasteful and dangerous conflicts.

On the other hand, if that is his intention, he’s been unable to make much headway with an establishment that constitutionally is totally under his authority but in practice seems to be almost entirely independent of his supervision.

For example, Trump expresses his desire the get US forces out of Afghanistan but then announces that contrary to his own preferences he’s putting more troops in. He meets in Helsinki with Russian President Vladimir Putin to achieve détente but then the State and Treasury Department immediately poison the well with more sanctions and evidence-free accusations of Russian meddling in the upcoming Congressional elections. Trump announces his willingness to meet with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani without preconditions but then is immediately overruled by über-President (a/k/a Secretary of State) Mike Pompeo.

Much of this reflects the nature of his appointments. As Lawrence Wilkerson details (“The Neoconservative Comeback”), Trump’s foreign and security policy apparatus is dominated by “the reentry into critical positions in the government of … the people who gave America the 2003 invasion of Iraq, [even] those many of them who declared ‘Never Trump’” in 2016. Indeed, it’s hard to think of a single member of his top team, or even anyone identifiable in the secondary rank, who agrees with the Trump campaign vision of an “America First” national interest-based strategy that means getting along with Russia and China, versus unending, reckless, global hegemonism.

Well fine, one might say, that’s an explanation but not an excuse. In the end, it’s his own fault. He picked these people.

That’s true. But one still wonders Why. Does he not know better? Is he so supremely confident of his own ability to make the “final decision” that he doesn’t care how his underlings might seek to stack the deck to implement their preferences, not his? Are there no alternative personnel available, given the danger of ending up like General Mike Flynn? Is he just paying off his donors?

In the end, the Why may not matter as much as the What – which is that Trump’s policies, in substance, differ little in the end from what we would have gotten from a Mitt Romney or a Hillary Clinton administration:

  • Attempts to unravel the understandings reached at Singapore between Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un by accusing Pyongyang of dragging their feet on denuclearization while pressing for renewed US-South Korea military drills (which Trump appears to be resisting). As Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.comobserves: “The North Koreans are no dummies: they know a regime change operation when they see one. As they watch our Deep State go after a democratically elected President whose hopes for peace complement their own, the North Koreans are waiting to see if Trump survives. I can’t say that I blame them.”

Raimondo’s reference to regime change is important. Since before he took office Trump was besieged within his own administration by a hostile phalanx of Democrats, almost all of the GOP establishment, the federal law enforcement and intelligence nomenklatura, and the media. It doesn’t help that his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, seems to think he has nothing better to do than crank up the civil forfeiture machine and give states a hard time for playing fast and loose with federal marijuana laws, while a criminal anti-constitutional conspiracy operates under his nose at the Department of Justice and the FBI in cahoots with elements of the US and British intelligence agencies.

Certainly Trump’s enemies and false friends, both inside and outside his administration, would love nothing better than to goad and cheer him into a splendid little war that, when it inevitably proves a disaster, would be blamed not on their globalist ideology but on someone they see as a shallow, superficial, unqualified Twitter-addicted unstable personality who never should have been allowed into the Oval Office. That would certainly alienate independents and maybe chip into his supporteven among his core Deplorables.

With the approach of an election that may produce a Democratic House of Representatives that almost surely will impeach him – a distinct possibility given voter fraud and government and corporate collusion to censor alternative and social media – Trump himself maybe be tempted toplay the death card.

Ordering military actions is one of the few commands to his subordinates he can be confident will be carried out, since that is their overwhelming preference too. Plus, as we must well remember, on previous occasions when he ordered military strikes on Syria he won a brief respite from the constant pounding from his political and media antagonists, who instead praised his “leadership,” summed up in Fareed Zakaria’s moronic observation after the April 2017 strike on Syria: “I think Donald Trump became President of the United States” last night.

Whether Trump decides to lay down the Ace of Spades or the self-guiding machinery of power seeking to undermine him does so on its own, we are in for a run of heightened danger between now and Election Day (November 6). While there are a number of possible flashpoints, one theater stands out: again Syria, where the impending government offensive against the last significant area still held by jihadists, al-Qaeda-occupied Idlib, sets the stage for yet another false flag chemical weapons attack.

In an unusual move, Russian officials briefed the State Department on plans for a chlorine gas strike by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, formerly al-Nusra Front, formerly just plain old al-Qaeda, with British special services “actively involved” in the “provocation,” which will “serve as another reason for the US, the UK, and France to hit Syrian government targets with air strikes.” US, British, and French forces have concentrated in the eastern Mediterranean in preparation for an attack against Syrian government forces (effectively in support of the al-Qaeda-led jihadists), and Russia has also beefed up its naval presence. Without any sense of irony, the State Department summarily dismissed Moscow’s warning as just “more false flag type reporting” – for the simple reason that it came from the Russians – and Deep State mouthpiece media like Bellingcat treat it as itself an indication that Damascus plans to use chemical weapons. As Caitlin Johnstone observes:

‘This past April the US, UK and France launched airstrikes against Damascus in retaliation for an alleged chemical attack allegedly perpetrated by the Syrian government against civilians in the city of Douma. The strike was launched with no investigation having taken place whatsoever into the nature of the civilian deaths, and subsequent investigation found no evidence implicating the Syrian government in a chemical attack. This is unsurprising, because the Syrian government had no incentive to use chemical weapons in a battle it had already won at that point and every incentive not to provoke the wrath of powerful western military forces just to suffocate some kids to death. [ . . . ]

‘Even if you dismiss the intelligence which Russia supplied to the US saying that a false flag chemical weapons attack is being prepared for in Idlib, it is self-evident that the jihadist militants would have every motive to stage one if given the opportunity.

‘Keep an eye on this one, please. Syria is a key strategic region that the western power alliance has been plotting to take control of for decades, and it is entirely possible that they will pounce on any opportunity to prevent the Syrian government and its allies from shoring up control of the nation and bringing stability to the region. Stay skeptical.’

It should also be noted that this scene is unfolding in the aftermath of an unusual peace overture to Damascus, under which the US offered to withdraw the illegal deployment of American troops on Syrian territory under three conditions. As described by Tom Luongo:

‘According to a recent report by Joaquin Flores at Fort Russ News, the U.S. offered a withdrawal plan to Bashar al-Assad of Syria with three conditions. What should be immediately obvious is that the U.S. offered the meeting and opened up the talks.

‘This is proof positive that the U.S. position in Syria is untenable and the U.S. [JGJ: or maybe just Trump?] is searching for a way out that will save a little face.

‘From Fort Russ:

‘First: Iran’s full withdrawal from the Syrian south.

‘Washington: withdrawal from the [al-Tanf] and eastern Euphrates against three conditions, including giving us a share of oil.

‘Second: obtaining written assurances that US companies will receive a share of the oil sector in eastern Syria. 

‘Third, to provide the Syrian side with the Americans with full data on the terrorist groups and their members, including the numbers of foreign victims of these groups and those who survived, and those who have the possibility of returning to Western countries, considering that “the terrorist threat is intercontinental, we can get hurt in the service of international security”.

‘The Syrian response to this generous offer could easily be termed as dismissive. Assad has no reason to guarantee the U.S. anything after its shameful display over the past seven years. [ . . . ]

‘Trump is surrounded by vipers and neocons (or do I repeat myself) who, despite his better instincts, fill him with nonsense which he then acts on without much reflection.

‘I still feel that Putin laid on him some very eye-opening information behind closed doors in Helsinki which is why the intelligence agencies freaked out afterwards. But, this offer to withdraw from Syria is, yet again with Trump, two steps forward and one step back. [ . . . ]

‘If Trump’s goal is peace in the region, then this operation needs to go smoothly and it will if it’s allowed to. But, that’s the problem. Once Syria’s settled it makes it easier for Trump to declare, “Mission Accomplished.”

‘If he doesn’t he’s going to have to go back to his base and tell them we need to stay to counter Iran? A country he keeps telling us is on the verge of collapse thanks to sanctions?

‘That’s not going to fly with his base who wants the empire dismantled. So, the argument for the false flag makes sense to trap Trump into having to stay, if not expand the conflict, to push Assad from office while damaging him at home on the eve of the mid-terms.

‘This is the trap that’s being laid right now because peace is not allowed to break out in the Middle East.’

As Trump considers the next card he must play in the coming weeks and days, he needs to know that most of those advising him – the vipers and neocons he has surrounded himself with – have at heart neither his interests nor America’s. If he plays the Ace of Spades and things go terribly wrong, he’s the one who will end up the Joker – or switching game metaphors, draw the card that tells the millionaire “GO TO JAIL: Go directly to Jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.”

Of course at that point, if things outside the US get really ugly, what happens to Trump’s political fortunes could be the least of everybody’s worries.

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After Two Failures, Whitney Tilson Is Back With Another Attempt At Managing Money

Back in the summer of 2012, we had some fun when we reported that Whitney Tilson – the consummate, if always late “value investing” immitator of other prominent investors especially Warren Buffett and Bill Ackman and sworn #NeverTrumper – following several years of abysmal returns, closed his then-hedge fund T2 (with Glenn Tongue), splitting off into his own, oddly-named venture, Kase Capital. Then, one year ago, Whitney – who in recent years was better known for his family photos from Africa than managing money- did it again when Tilson officially closed his hedge fund and exited the asset management industry.

The reason for the closure is that Tilson’s latest hedge fund, Kase Capital, which was managing a whopping $50 million at the time of closure, down from a peak of $180 million, lost about 8% in the first 8 months of 2017, and his clients finally threw in the towel.

Shortly after exiting the asset management industry, Tilson – who admitted that in his “18¾ years managing money professionally via numerous hedge funds and mutual funds, I had a very unexpected, frustrating and humbling experience: my performance got worse over time” – decided to teach others about his numerous investing mistakes, and founded Kase Learning, which offers a range of seminars and webinars for professional investors but mostly for avid amateurs “to help them become better investors and, for some, launch and build a successful investment management business.”

And while it remains to be seen if Tilson is a better teacher than investor, it now appears that Whitney – having shown some modest returns in his personal account – is contemplating a return to money management yet again. As Tilson reveals in a wide ranging Seeking Alpha interview, “I’m in the process of setting up a separately-managed accounts business right now. Initially, it’s just going to be for friends, family and former investors, but perhaps I’ll expand it over time.” 

Why will this time be different? Because, as he explains, “money management is still the greatest business in the world, I love the game” and “I am confident that I will be successful now that I’ve taken a break and internalized the lessons I learned (and now teach) from nearly two decades in the trenches.”

Which is odd because in the very same interview, Tilson says that he is discouraging “many young investors who take the seminars I teach at Kase Learning from starting their own funds.”

That would make Whitney is different, although aside from blowing up not once but twice, it wasn’t exactly clear “how.”

To those who decide to test their luck and allocate capital to see what lessons Tilson has “internalized” from getting blowing out of the money management industry, good luck, although one wonders why take the risk when one can just do the opposite of Dennis Gartman and retire comfortably in the near future.

His full interview with Seeking Alpha is below:

Interview With Whitney Tilson: The Most Important Question An Investor Needs To Answer

Seeking Alpha: You’ve seen a lot of changes in your nearly two decades in the industry – what does the industry look like going forward? How can managers adapt to what seem like ever-increasing challenges?

Whitney Tilson: I think that starting, building and managing a successful hedge fund is much harder today than when I started with $1 million with a laptop on an Ikea desk out of my bedroom nearly two decades ago. There are so many more hedge fund managers, looking for inefficiencies in the nooks and crannies of the market. Plus I’m convinced that the supercomputers running the quant funds are much smarter today than they were even five years ago – and that this trend is going to continue, just like what’s happened with self-driving cars. In the past, I think they were just playing the momentum game, which actually created opportunities for value guys like me, but now I feel like they’re running the value investing playbook. Lastly, the huge (and, I think, permanent) trend toward indexing means that only a handful of stocks are driving the indices, which makes it really hard for any manager who doesn’t own these stocks to keep up.

From a top-down perspective, hedge funds as an asset class are deeply out of favor because a long, complacent bull market like this one is the worst kind of environment. Thus, hedge funds for nearly a decade have offered the worst of both worlds: crappy performance and high fees.

In light of these many headwinds, am I discouraging the many young investors who take the seminars I teach at Kase Learning from starting their own funds? For some, yes. The right answer for them is to bide their time, get more experience, build their investing and entrepreneurial skills as well as reputation, and bank more savings. For others, who have what it takes to launch a fund, my message is that they will have to be even better than their predecessors, do even more in-depth research, be even more rational and disciplined, and make even better decisions. Even for the best-prepared emerging managers, this will not be easy.

That said, human nature hasn’t changed in two key ways: first, there will always be large numbers of investors who won’t be satisfied with average (which is, of course, exactly what one gets with an index fund) and will therefore seek active managers who can outperform. Secondly, there will no doubt be plenty of market corrections and even a few panics in the future, which will create wonderful opportunities for investors who can keep their wits about them.

SA: How has your investing style and view of the markets changed? How does your current personal investing style compare to the one employed at Kase?

WT: In my 18¾ years managing money professionally via numerous hedge funds and mutual funds, I had a very unexpected, frustrating and humbling experience: my performance got worse over time! In an experienced-based business, this is not the outcome one would expect – after all, in other experience-based endeavors – think teachers, fighter pilots or brain surgeons — I have no doubt that someone with a dozen years in the field would outperform a rookie.

I’ve spent a lot of time carefully analyzing what went wrong in my case, in part so I can be a better investor in the second half of my life (I’m 51) and also so I can teach the right lessons to my students. The answer is complex: to use Charlie Munger’s favorite word, it takes lollapalooza effects to screw up the great business I had after my first dozen years. An eight-year attempt to manage money with a partner didn’t work and the market became more challenging, but the single biggest reason I’d cite is that I became too smart for my own good. My success led me to think that I could add value by, for example, trying to time the market, trading, using options, going out on margin, and short selling. All of these activities cost me dearly.

Since I closed my funds last September and received cash (along with all of my investors) a few weeks later, I’ve primarily been focused on building my new business, Kase Learning, so have kept my investing very part time and incredibly simple: of the money I allocated to stocks, I invested 1/3 in Berkshire Hathaway, 1/3 in Howard Hughes, and 1/3 split evenly among Amazon, Alphabet and Facebook.

And you know what? I haven’t made a single trade and have spent no time thinking about my portfolio, yet it’s roughly doubled the market’s return.

I think there is a powerful lesson here: don’t try to be too smart; instead, keep it simple and only make a few investment decisions a year, when something really obvious comes along.

SA: You experienced the ups and downs of short selling. What lessons can you share?

WT: There are so many that we created a full-day seminar focused solely on short selling at Kase Learning. One simple piece of advice for most investors is: don’t do it! It’s just too hard, too risky and too time consuming. This was the advice Charlie Munger gave me very early in my career and one of my great regrets is that I was too dumb to listen to him.

But even if you never short a single stock, you will be well served to study and learn about it, develop the skeptical mindset of a short seller, and know where to look for red flags and unearth hidden troubles. It’s a crucial skill for any long investor, when analyzing a stock that has a meaningful short interest, to recognize that this is a major warning flag that the stock might be a value trap, figure out what the short thesis is, and thoroughly disprove it before buying the stock.

For some investors, however, doing some (or even a lot of) short selling can make good sense. But I’m not sure the traditional Tiger-cub model of being short 70 1%-average-size positions works anymore – certainly in a complacent bull market like this one. Instead, the successful short sellers I’m aware of today tend to fall into two categories:

1) They are very quiet, avoid battleground stocks, and tend to short melting ice cubes – companies often owned by other value investors, but where earnings decline materially; or

2) They are concentrated and opportunistic, with clearly identified catalysts. For example, one of my students, Gabriel Grego of Quintessential Capital Management, did extensive, global due diligence on fashion retailer Folli Follie, discovered that the company didn’t have nearly the number of stores or revenues that it claimed, built a large short position, and shared his work at the Kase Learning shorting conference on May 3, which led to an immediate collapse in the stock and its delisting within two weeks (he will be presenting a new idea at our next shorting conference on Dec. 3).

SA: What is the most important question an investor should answer when developing their investment thesis?

WT: What is your variant perception and why is it right? Almost every stock is valued based on investors’ consensus expectations about the future performance of the business. It’s generally quite easy to figure out what these expectations are – just read any analyst report.

Your challenge is very simple – yet also very difficult: find stocks in which the performance of the business turns out to be far different than the consensus view today (either outperformance if you’re long or underperformance if you’re short).

Three years ago, the stock of Restoration Hardware was riding high, peaking above $100 before it dropped by 75% amidst missed earnings and investor fears that the company would be yet another bricks-and-mortar retailer crushed by Amazon. Yet another one of my students correctly saw that RH has a visionary CEO and a highly differentiated product and strategy, and thus was likely to recover – and has made six times his money in less than two years.

This is a classic value investment: find a good company encountering difficulties that other investors think are permanent, (resulting in a severely depressed stock price), but which prove to be fixable — and ride the stock up and up and up.

But sometimes the variant perception can be that a great company, with a stock at an all-time high, still has many years of high growth ahead of it, when the consensus view is that growth is going to slow. If you can find a stock in which growth instead accelerates (good examples in recent years include Netflix and Amazon), you’re likely to make a lot of money here as well.

SA: How would you answer that question for your thesis on Berkshire Hathaway?

WT: As you can see in our latest analysis of Berkshire Hathaway, which is always posted at www.tilsonfunds.com/BRK.pdf, I don’t think the stock is particularly cheap – it’s a 90-cent dollar today, so I view it as an attractive substitute for an S&P 500 index fund. I think it’ll keep up if the bull market continues, as it’s done almost exactly since the market bottomed in March 2009, but will outperform in a down market thanks to its healthy, diversified cash flows, Fort Knox balance sheet and conservative management. I think this is especially true in light of Buffett’s new disclosure this week that he’s bought back some of his stock recently – at prices around 1.4x book value. I think this puts in a new (albeit soft) floor on the stock at close to today’s price.

SA: What company’s share price confuses you the most, and why?

WT: Tesla. I think Musk is a brilliant entrepreneur, engineer, and genius in many ways, but both he and the company have gotten wildly overextended and are cracking under the pressure. I hope for the sake of U.S. manufacturing and the future of the environment that Tesla doesn’t implode, but I think the odds of this happening have risen to at least 30% in the last few months.

SA: What investment idea (from your personal investing or managing money) do you think most about and why?

WT: Again, Tesla (even though I haven’t had any position for nearly five years). It’s an unbelievably entertaining unfolding drama, with tremendous lessons that can be learned by smart observers.

SA: Would you ever consider managing money again? If so, what would need to happen for you to consider this?

WT: Funny you should ask, as I’m in the process of setting up a separately-managed accounts business right now. Initially, it’s just going to be for friends, family and former investors, but perhaps I’ll expand it over time. Money management is still the greatest business in the world, I love the game, and am confident that I will be successful now that I’ve taken a break and internalized the lessons I learned (and now teach) from nearly two decades in the trenches.

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“Anatomy Of A Fusion Smear”: WSJ Exposes Dirty Tactics Of “Steele Dossier” Firm

The Wall Street Journal editorial board has thrown one of their former journalists, Glenn Simpson, completely under the bus over his firm’s political hit-jobs for hire – including feeding twice-demoted DOJ official Bruce Ohr damaging “misinformation” in the Trump-Russia investigation. 

Now we’re learning how this misinformation got around, and the evidence points to Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS, the outfit that financed the infamous Steele dossier. –WSJ

***

Via the WSJ Editorial Board

Anatomy of a Fusion Smear

Democrats and their media friends made false claims about a lawyer.

Cleta Mitchell is a top campaign-finance lawyer in Washington, D.C. This year she’s also been the target of a political and media smear that reveals some of the nastiness at work in the allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Cleta Mitchell, a partner at Foley & Lardner in Washington, D.C., Feb. 6, 2014. PHOTO: PABLO MARTINEZ MONSIVAIS/ASSOCIATED PRESS

A partner at Foley & Lardner, Ms. Mitchell was astonished to find herself dragged into the Russia investigation on March 13 when Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee issued an interim report. They wrote that they still wanted to interview “key witnesses,” including Ms. Mitchell, who they claimed was “involved in or may have knowledge of third-party political outreach from the Kremlin to the Trump campaign, including persons linked to the National Rifle Association (NRA).”

Two days later the McClatchy news service published a story with the headline “NRA lawyer expressed concerns about group’s Russia ties, investigators told.” The story cited two anonymous sources claiming Congress was investigating Ms. Mitchell’s worries that the NRA had been “channeling Russia funds into the 2016 elections to help Donald Trump.”

Ms. Mitchell says none of this is true. She hadn’t done legal work for the NRA in at least a decade, had zero contact with it in 2016, and had spoken to no one about its actions. She says she told this to McClatchy, which published the story anyway.

Now we’re learning how this misinformation got around, and the evidence points to Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS, the outfit that financed the infamous Steele dossier. New documents provided to Congress show that Mr. Simpson, a Fusion co-founder, was feeding information to Justice Department official Bruce Ohr. In an interview with House investigators this week, Mr. Ohr confirmed he had known Mr. Simpson for some time, and passed at least some of his information along to the FBI.

In handwritten notes dated Dec. 10, 2016 that the Department of Justice provided to Congress and were transcribed for us by a source, Mr. Ohr discusses allegations that Mr. Simpson made to him in a conversation. The notes read: “A Russian senator (& mobster) . . . [our ellipsis] may have been involved in funneling Russian money to the NRA to use in the campaign. An NRA lawyer named Cleta Mitchell found out about the money pipeline and was very upset, but the election was over.”

A spokesman for Adam Schiff, ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, says the “Minority did not speak with Mr. Simpson or Fusion GPS about this,” though he declined to disclose who named Ms. Mitchell. Our sources say they can’t remember Ms. Mitchell coming up in any of the documents collected or witness interviews conducted for the investigation. So how did Mr. Schiff get his tip? Fusion’s media friends? Mr. Ohr? The FBI? Fusion GPS and Mr. Simpson did not answer a request for comment.

Ms. Mitchell says the fallout for her goes beyond inconvenience and a false allegation. Mr. Schiff’s team in May sent her a letter demanding testimony and documents, though no one in Mr. Schiff’s office alerted her before naming her in an official document.

She received similar demands from Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr, who wanted Ms. Mitchell to turn over records related to “the transfer of money, or anything of value” between her and several Russians. After Ms. Mitchell in May responded that she had no information related to any of those Russians and accused the committee of being duped by “Glenn Simpson & Co.,” she heard nothing more.

But social media attacks on her haven’t ended. “That allegation impugns my ethical integrity and professional reputation,” she says, one reason she’s calling for Mr. Simpson to be prosecuted for lying to a federal official.

The Russian collusion accusations ginned up by Fusion at the behest of a law firm working for the Clinton campaign haven’t been corroborated despite two years of investigations. But no one should forget the smears that they and their media mouthpieces peddled along the way.

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Germans ‘Too Lazy’ To Counter-Protest “Racist” Demonstrations After Migrants Arrested In Stabbing

Angela Merkel’s foreign minister effectively called Germans lazy for not counter-protesting thousands of angry East Germans who took to the streets of Chemnitz after two migrants were arrested in a fatal stabbing of a German man, reports AP. 

“We have to get off the couch and open the mouth,” said Foreign Minister Heiko Maas in an interview with weekly paper Bild am Sonntag, adding “Our generation was given freedom, rule of law and democracy as a present. We didn’t have to fight for it; (now) we’re taking it too much for granted.”

The demonstrators have been characterized by both German officials and the MSM as “far right” and “neo-nazis” whose protests are racist, after several people were seen giving Nazi salutes. 18 people, including three police officers, sustained injuries during the rallies – while demonstrators clashed with the few counter-protesters who did show up. Some 300 people were arrested, while 11 were hospitalized. 

“If the Hitler salute is shown on our streets today once again, it will be a disgrace to our country,” said Maas. 

Maas’ comments followed Saturday’s demonstrations by about 4,500 far-right protesters in Chemnitz, who were rallying against migration a week after a German was killed in the eastern city, allegedly by two migrants from Iraq and Syria. Around 4,000 leftist protesters also marched through the city in a counter-protest, and 1,800 police officers were deployed to keep the groups apart. –AP

Tensions flared lsat week over Merkel’s 2015 open-border policy of allowing a million asylum seekers into the country, after 35-year-old German carpenter Daniel Hillig was killed last Sunday. Authorities arrested two men in connection with the stabbing; 21-year-old Yousif Ibrahim Abdullah – who was slated for deportation in mid-2016 only to have authorities miss a six-month deadline to do so, and a Syrian man. 

The murder sparked an initial protest in which several people were arrested and injured. 

Michael Kretschmer, Saxony premier, said the failure to deport the stabbing suspect, a 21-year-old Iraqi man with multiple previous convictions, was the responsibility of federal authorities. A 22-year-old Syrian suspect was also arrested. –Reuters

Saturday’s march was led by members of the AfD party, which is staunchly opposed to Merkel’s open-border policies. Right wing groups such as PEGIDA also said they participated in the march to mourn Hillig’s murder after the leaked arrest warrant revealed that the suspects were illegals. AfD and PEGIDA leaders wore dark suits and carried white roses as they began what they referred to as a “mourning march” on Saturday night. 

Off the couch

Leftists began to counter-protest on the other side of town, marching under the slogan “Heart instead of Hate,” in the center of Chemnitz – known as Karl-Marx-Stadt during the Cold War. 

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