Tag: finance

My partner found $57 million in a random corner of Asia

[Introduction from Simon: We’ve got one more investing Notes today.

This essay, originally published in August of 2016, I think best exemplifies the strategy Sovereign Man’s Chief Investment Strategist, Tim Staermose, uses in his 4th Pillar investment service.

It shows you the huge potential in buying quality assets for less than their net cash backing. It’s hard to wrong when buying the right companies for so low a price.

And despite today’s richly valued markets, Tim has still found three companies currently trading for less than their net cash and cash equivalents.

Read on to learn more about the 4th Pillar strategy…]

Two months ago at the annual Benjamin Graham Conference in New York City, billionaire hedge fund manager Leon Cooperman told the audience that their industry was on the ropes.

“[O]ur industry is in turmoil. It’s very ironic because you’ve got Clinton and Sanders crapping all over us and they don’t realize Wall Street is in the midst of a very serious downturn. . .”

He’s right. Investors are bailing on hedge funds in record numbers because these hot shot investment managers aren’t able to generate meaningful investment returns.

All the tricks that used to work for them in the past are now falling flat.

And as Cooperman explained, there’s a giant consolidation right now where only two types of people will be able to make money in financial markets.

The first is traders… specifically high frequency traders (HFT).

These are the gigantic financial institutions and billionaire math geniuses who build sophisticated algorithms that buy and sell stocks at blinding speed, sometimes entering and exiting positions in just a fraction of a second.

High-frequency traders rarely (if ever) hold positions overnight, let alone for months and years.

They’re not interested in the fundamentals of a business, merely the volume and momentum of the stock.

The second group is long-term value investors– people that are trying to buy a dollar for 50 cents.

Value investors care very deeply about what they’re buying; in fact, they don’t buy stocks, but rather shares of high quality businesses with talented, honest, energetic managers.

These two methods– trading vs. value investing– are remarkably different.

To be a trader today means competing against titans like Goldman Sachs, with their legions of PhD quantitative analysts, plus some of the most advanced networks and intellectual property in the world.

Or even worse, competing against high-frequency traders who have paid bribed the exchanges so that their own servers can be co-located in the same building as the exchanges’ servers.

This enables the traders to receive information from, say, the New York Stock Exchange, a fraction of a millisecond before anyone else.

But in that fraction of a millisecond, the HFT firm’s algorithms can process the information and place trades ahead of the crowd.

That’s the environment that traders are competing in.

And to be successful in this environment, you need an edge. You win by being smarter, accessing information faster, or developing superior technology.

Value investing is entirely different.

Value investing is about patience, common sense, and good old fashioned hard work.

Here’s a great example– Tim Staermose, our Chief Investment Strategist at Sovereign Man, recommended a business called Nam Tai Property to subscribers of his premium investment newsletter, the 4th Pillar.

Around New Year’s 2015, Nam Tai had $261 million in CASH, plus a ton of real estate in Asia conservatively worth $221 million, even at recession prices.

Yet the company’s market value at the time was $204 million.

So in theory you could buy the entire company for $204 million, put that entire amount right back in your pocket, and still have $57 million in free money left over, PLUS $221 million in real estate.

It was an unbelievable deal.

But Tim was skeptical (as usual), so he hopped on a plane and spent a LOT of time on the ground investigating the company’s assets first hand to determine for himself that it was real.

It was absolutely real. (We’ll discuss later this week why the market sometimes presents these crazy opportunities…)

So with some common sense to recognize a great opportunity ($57 million in free money… duh.)

Plus a LOT of hard work for Tim and his team to make sure that it was legitimate and real.

Plus a little bit of patience (it took about 18 months for the stock to surge), Tim’s 4th Pillar subscribers are up 108% on Nam Tai Property.

That’s the great thing about value investing: it’s not rocket science.

Yes, investigating a company’s assets and analyzing its balance sheet is a skill, and one that can be learned. Great value investors like Tim have become masters of it.

But it’s not about being smarter or better or more advanced than everyone else. It really is about patience, common sense, and hard work.

Between the two, it’s clear to me that DEEP value investing is the superior approach.

Source

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What Do You See? Take Our Rorschach Test

Via Global Macro Monitor,

Watch Brazilian surfer Rodrigo Koxa ride an 80-foot wave in Portugal last November. Koxa was recently recognized for the feat at the Big Wave Awards in Santa Monica, California.

Please view the video above and respond by choosing the best answer which most closely represents your perception of the ink blots big wave surfer video.  Free association is welcome.

We will run the algorithm to analyze your personality.

Q:   What do you see in the big wave surfing video?

  1. Investors riding the coming breakout rally in the S&P500

  2. Traders long stocks about to be rushed by a vicious bear market

  3. “Blue Wave” November election where Democrats take the House and Senate

  4. President Trump surfing opinion polls to a 50 plus percent approval rating

  5. Bernie Sanders about to get crushed politically

  6. The inflation wave about to break on the U.S. economy

  7. The deflation wave about to break on the U.S. economy

  8. Google recording your internet surfing

  9. FX traders riding the coming dollar rally

  10. Gold traders riding the coming rally

  11. Bitcoin traders about to get candy crushed

  12. The Clintons finally going down in the Whitewater

  13. Bitcoin traders riding the price up to $1 million

  14. Bond investors about to be destroyed by a U.S. debt crisis

  15. A Brazilian surfer killing it

  16. Other

  17. All of the above (WTF?)

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Gold Tumbles To 2018 Lows As Dollargasm Sparks Dow Dump, Yield Jump

The Dow is down over 250 points (at the lows of the day) back at one-week lows, Nasdaq is surging (at the highs of the day) as the dollar index just keeps on running higher, breaking key technical resistance on the way amid a low liquidity trading day.

With Europe on May Day holiday, the dollar is untethered…

 

And Treasury yields are spiking along with the dollar…

 

And as the dollar spikes, Dow is tumbling…

 

But Nasdaq is surging…

 

Meanwhile, Gold is getting monkeyhammered back towards $1300 – the lowest level of the year…

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Why Goldman Is Euphoric On Oil: “There Is No Precedent Of This Happening Outside A Recession”

Confirming that what Jeff Gundlach predicted last December, when the DoubleLine CEO said his favorite trade for 2018 is to be long commodities, has been spot on…

.. this morning Goldman’s head commodity strategist Jeff Currie writes that commodities are the best performing asset class of 2018, and echoes the bank’s recent enthusiasm on the asset class, saying “the strategic case for owning commodities has rarely been stronger.” The reasons for Currie’s enthusiasm, as we discussed previously, are straightforward:

Robust late-cycle growth is depleting global supply chains, creating increasing positive carry. As inflationary concerns push interest rates higher, cross-asset correlations with commodities decline, and the diversification benefits rise with higher rates. Rising geopolitical and trade policy risks only add to the inflationary mix in commodities.

And yet, perhaps in light of the recent sharp move higher in oil prices, Goldman admits that investors remain skeptical of commodity investments “even though Brent carry pays 15% pa and the supermajors are paying dividends north of 4%.” As Goldman lays out, concerns stem from:

  • a decade of underperformance with E&Ps destroying 23 cents on a dollar invested,
  • fear of buying the top of an ‘artificial’ rally from supply cuts, and
  • the lack of a structural catalyst like China in the 2000s.

To boost investor morale, Currie lays out three bullish catalysts, first noting that the weak returns of the past decade are (likely) behind us:

1. The weak returns of the past decade are behind us. The global economy was operating below capacity in the ‘recession/recovery’ phase for over a decade and any early-cycle playbook warns of the poor returns in commodities when the global economy has slack in the system. Today it is operating near or above capacity.

2. The structural story is a lack of long-cycle investment. Short-cycle investments in sectors such as technology and even shale oil and gas have attracted capital over the past decade at the expense of long-cycle investments in oil and commodities. Going forward, short-cycle projects are not sufficient to balance demand and commodity prices need to incent long-cycle investment.

3. Prices are high because inventories are depleted. While supply cuts pulled forward market tightness, inventories are now low and demand levels significantly exceed supply levels.

This in turn leads to the most compelling observation by Goldman, namely that there is no precedent of supply from OPEC or any other producer overtaking demand this late in the business cycle to replenish inventories before a recession occurs.

In other words, the current dynamic may continue until such time as the negative feedback loops from surging oil prices send the world into a freefalling “cost-push” recession, a repeat of what happened in the summer of 2008, when $150 oil was one of the catalyst to unleash the financial crisis.

* * *

And while a recession will clearly end the party, Goldman admits other risks are also present, chief among which is China, arguably the driving catalyst behind the 2015/2016 global recession. The recent Caterpillar warning only underscores these concerns. Here’s Goldman:

To be sure, this does not mean that commodities outperform in every quarter in this stage of the business cycle. For example, China metals demand was weak in Q1 owing to the late Lunar New Year and the uncertainties created by this year’s National People’s Congress in March. Inventories of steel, copper, and aluminum climbed sharply in the first quarter. Machinery sales were strong but mainly driven by replacement demand. Other indicators such as cement production and excavator hours point to weak construction activity. Through its strong trade linkages with other countries like Europe and Japan, it also contributed to the softness in global growth.

However, one important lesson we learned about China during the past year is that the overall growth target is still important to the government and policies are likely to remain flexible to counterbalance perceived risks domestically or from abroad. In fact, the PBOC recently announced an RRR cut to offset risks of trade tensions with the US. The politburo meeting in late April also signaled an easing bias while the country continues to pursue structural reforms. Higher frequency data have already shown demand picking up in China. Taken together, we think the Q1 weakness is temporary and continue to hold a constructive view on metals for the rest of 2018.

China aside, a bigger paradox in Goldman’s overall view is that, as Currie notes, the bank – like Gundlach – is pushing for a more aggressive ‘tilt’ just as growth is slowing, which “seems counterintuitive.”

Advocating for a more aggressive allocation just when economic growth is beginning to slow might sound somewhat counterintuitive. The reason for this is simple. Financial markets depend upon expectations and hence on expected growth rates in economic activity, which are showing signs of slowing.

In contrast to financial markets, however, commodities depend upon activity levels, not growth. So even if
growth slows, as long as demand levels are above supply levels – which creates market tightness – commodities can still generate positive returns. Some more details on this key thesis of a “scarcity premium”:

This observation is at the core of the late-cycle playbook for owning commodities and why commodities typically perform the best when other asset classes perform their worst, particularly in relation to inflation. When demand levels exceed the capacity to produce, i.e. a positive output gap, commodities inventories drawdown. The resulting inflationary pressure slows expected growth rates via higher interest rates, which hurts financial assets. In contrast, even if the growth rate of commodity demand slows, the high level of commodity demand continues to deplete supplies, which maintains the scarcity premium in commodity prices, i.e. spot prices trade a premium to forward prices.

The scarcity premium creates the positive carry in commodities as the investor buys forward at a discount. Think of oxygen: if it became scarce we would pay an enormous premium today for it as we don’t need it tomorrow if we don’t have it today. Financial markets cannot possess this characteristic which is why gold cannot go backwardated since it is not consumed like oxygen, energy or grains. But it is this scarcity premium that creates the late-cycle diversification benefits of commodities, particularly in relation to inflation.

In oil, the current scarcity premium is 14.7% pa, which means oil prices could drop by $10/bbl in and the investor still breaks even. It is important to point out that the scarcity premium is always larger the closer you are to physical spot prices, which means the investor would prefer to roll the front end of the curve 12 times as opposed to buying 12 months out. For example, the second month contract trades at a 1.1% discount to the spot versus the 12-month contract at a 9.2% discount, which means that rolling 1.1% 12 times creates a 14.7% return which is greater than a 9.2% return. This is the essence of scarcity.

The key to this scarcity premium in commodities is the high levels of demand usually associated with a late cycle economy. Underscoring that this commodity market is not artificially driven by supply cuts from China and OPEC/Russia is the increasing number of commodities developing a scarcity premium. Currently we calculate that 13 out of 24 commodities are in backwardation. As Exhibit 19 shows, as the business cycle deepens the number of commodity markets creating a scarcity premium has increased significantly as supply chains are depleted.

In conclusion, Goldman also reverts to another point it popularized last year, namely that while higher oil prices may sap consumer demand, they end up easing financial conditions, as “they lead to more global excess savings.”

And indeed, there is increasing evidence of an improving trend in the international dollar liquidity. BIS data shows that global banks’ cross-border claims and liabilities have been on the rise, indicating easier accessibility of dollar credit. Dollar credit to EM economies has rebounded particularly strongly in 2017. Higher frequency measures such as dollar liquidity of European banks, measured by their dollar claims on the US banks, has been on the rise as well. European banks are at the center of global trade finance/cross-border credit and their dollar claims on US located banks can be seen as liquid reserves which support their dollar balance sheets (Exhibit 22).

Meanwhile, as one would expect in a world of rising commodity prices, EM FX reserves have begun to build again as a result of higher commodity prices and improvement in net capital flows (see Exhibit 23).

As the events of late 2015 taught us, EM FX reserves are significant providers of dollar liquidity to the euro-dollar market, and European banks specifically, both by direct cash lending and indirect lending through the derivatives such as cross currency basis swaps as well as lending out of other dollar assets such as US treasuries. (just ignore the blow-out of the LIBOR OIS spread, which while showing some modest signs of normalizing is still a long way away from “normal.”)

Summarizing the above, the liquidity released due to rising commodity prices, sits at the center of the self-reinforcing loop between the 3Rs, a concept also popularized by Goldman one year ago, one in which higher commodity prices (reflation) and stronger demand growth in EM through credit expansion (releveraging), which reinforces global synchronous growth (reconvergence in growth): these are the 3R’s and they are central to Goldman’s bullish view by creating a positive feedback loop that supports higher commodity prices.

And while all of the above makes sense, even with the troubling implication that the surge in oil will only end with the next recession/depression, things would be much easier if the dollar wasn’t surging in parallel with oil, making any incremental gains for commodities that much more difficult, as the most important driver of easy financial conditions around the globe continues to tighten with every passing day in what may be an extremely painful short squeeze…

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Pat Buchanan Blasts Bibi: He’s “Been Crying Wolf For Decades” About Iran

Following Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s powerpoint presentation Monday evening – allegedly demonstrating captured evidence, documents, and computer disks, showing a secret Iranian nuclear weapons program much more advanced and ambitious than the Iranian government publicly admits existed – Pat Buchanan joined Sean Hannity on his show to discuss the reality behind Bibi’s warning.

As RealClearPolitics’ Tim Hains reports, Buchanan pulled no punches in his criticism, exclaiming that the Israeli PM has been “crying wolf for decades” about Iran and that “Bibi Netanyahu, with due respect, wants the United States to fight a war with Iran on Israel’s behalf.”

“I don’t want my country getting into another war,” Buchanan said about Netanyahu’s revelation.

“The reason Iran doesn’t have a bomb is because they don’t want it. They could have built a bomb.”

“Tell the IAEA to go in and either confirm or deny what Netanyahu said.

“Don’t rely on him. Rely on our CIA coming out and saying, ‘We were wrong, Netanyahu is right, they have a secret atomic bomb program and they’re working on it right now and they have been and we were lied to.‘“

“If the CIA and DIA do that, I would say first to fire the guys in charge who didn’t cover it. And second, maybe we should act, but certainly not act on second-hand documents and a press conference from Bibi Netanyahu.”

“What are we going to do, rely on a press conference from Bibi Netanyahu to go to war?”

And Buchanan is not alone in his disdain for Bibi’s historic warmongering and lies.

H/T to @snarwani for the above

Liberty Blitzkrieg’s Mike Krieger notes that, of course, this isn’t the first time Netanyahu aggressively pitched the U.S. on war in the Middle East. He did the exact same thing, using the exact same playbook, in the run up to the Iraq war.

Fortunately, we have video evidence of his 2002 testimony to Congress, during which he hyperventilated and exaggerated about Iraq’s grave threat to the world as a result of its non-existsent WMDs. The guy was so incredibly wrong on Iraq, to such a disastrous degree, it’s amazing anyone listens to him at all anymore.

What follows are two must watch video clips from Netanyahu’s 2002 testimony. One of the more memorable — and spectacularly wrong — claims he made back then was when he proclaimed:

“If you take out Saddam, I guarantee, it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region”

Watch for yourself.

Instead, we got a failed state and the creation of ISIS. But hey, everyone makes mistakes that lead to the pointless murder of hundreds of thousands.

But that’s just a taste. In the clip below he all but guarantees (wrongly) that Saddam was putting all his energy into creating a nuclear bomb, and he talks repeatedly about “washing machine” sized centrifuges being surreptitiously moved around Iraq to evade the watchful eye of weapons inspectors.

In reality, Iraq simply didn’t have WMD.

Fast forward to today and Netanyahu is doing the exact same thing he did back in 2002, except he’s dropping a “Q” and replacing it with an “N” and asking the U.S. to hold hands with Israel and they instigate another calamitous conflict in a desperate attempt to solidify regional dominance.

None of this surprises me, and I’ve been warning about it in detail since early last year. I continue to believe another major military mistake in the Middle East will be the final nail in the coffin of the U.S. empire. When exactly this final mistake happens is hard to know, but I expect it to occur over the next several years. The ducks are all being put in a row.

*  *  *

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Inflation “Warning Lights” Are Flashing As Manufacturing Prices Soar Most Since 2011

Despite a tumble in ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ data in April, Markit reports the Manufacturing PMI survey surged to 56.5 (as expected) – its highest since Sept 2014. Output is rising at its fastest pace since Jan 2017 as inflationary pressures intensify dramatically.

As is usual recently in our baffle ’em with bullshit world, ISM Manufacturing disappointed, dropping to 57.3 (exp 58.5) to its lowest since July 2017.

Looks like ISM is fitting real data better than PMI…

ISM saw a big drop in employment, modest drop in new orders, but big jump higher in Prices Paid…

But there was a major divergence between adjusted and unadjusted new orders…

One ISM respondent summed things up well…

“[The] 232 and 301 tariffs are very concerning. Business planning is at a standstill until they are resolved. Significant amount of manpower [on planning and the like] being expended on these issues.

Commenting on the final PMI data, Chris Williamson, Chief Business Economist at IHS Markit said:

“April saw US manufacturers reporting the strongest monthly improvement in business conditions since September 2014. The survey suggests the economy has started the second quarter on a solid footing and sends an encouraging signal for GDP growth to accelerate after the modest 2.3% rate of expansion seen in the first quarter.

“With inflows of new orders rising at an accelerated pace, greater input buying and business expectations regarding future production levels running at one of the highest levels seen over the past three years, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest strong growth will persist through May.

“The upturn is being led by large firms, with smaller companies trailing behind but nonetheless also seeing some of the best business conditions for three years.

However, Williamson leaves the best/worst for last as inflationary pressures are intensifying dramatically…

“Warning lights are being flashed in relation to inflation, however, with factories reporting the strongest rise in prices for nearly seven years. Suppliers are hiking prices in response to surging demand, while tariffs and higher oil prices are also exerting upward pressure on costs.

With the average price of goods leaving factories rising at the fastest rate since 2011, consumer price inflation looks set to accelerate.”

And ISM data shows the soaring Prices Paid index (to its highest since April 2011) diverging from new orders and employment…

That did not end well last time.

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10 Reasons To Prepare For A Summer Of Dollar Love

Bloomberg’s macro strategist Mark Cudmore believes the stars are aligning for the Dollar’s ‘summer of love’.

The Dollar just broke above its 200DMA…

Whether the dollar ultimately goes on to test the 2017 highs may be a completely different issue, but the stars are aligned for recent dollar appreciation to sustain for a few months. Here are 10 reasons why the dollar will strengthen this summer…

1. Tuesday is expected to bring confirmation that the U.S. April manufacturing PMI was at a multi-year high. In February, the ISM equivalent — also out Tuesday — printed at the loftiest level since 2004

2. Factory owners are confident this year because the U.S. economy is indisputably strong, whether growth has peaked already or not. February industrial production saw the fastest annual increase since 2011.

3. Add in an outstanding U.S. earnings season that’s making equity valuations more attractive, and it’s clear that the U.S. is relatively fertile ground for putting cash to work.

4. This is happening amid a clear growth slowdown in major developed-market alternatives, notably the U.K. and Europe.

5. Note also that the rise in U.S. yields has been significant enough to start attracting unhedged inflows into Treasuries.

6. That’s important because it has seen the dollar begin to recorrelate to U.S. yields in the last month, just as there’s been further domestic pressure on the U.S. sovereign-debt market from increased issuance.

7. The dollar offers the highest FX-implied carry of G-10 currencies and that’s hard to ignore.

8. This positive growth and yield story isn’t new, but the positive divergence from large liquid peers has widened at the exact time the narrative around trade is evolving to be perceived as more likely to be beneficial for the U.S..

9. The U.S. administration is being consistent in its hardline message: either it gets most of what it wants or it will disrupt global trade. Either outcome will boost the dollar in the short-term.

10. And all this is against a backdrop of a fast-money investor base that has spent the last few months getting themselves short the dollar.

And in case that was not convincing enough, here are BofAML’s 8 reasons for selling EURUSD now…

  1. Continued soft Eurozone data in April discredits the “bad weather” theory but lends support to the “euro is too strong” theory.

  2. In the US, the recent upturn in business investment is paving the way for higher productivity and wage growth.

  3. A NAFTA deal over the next few weeks should increase US leverage in trade negotiations with China.

  4. Corporate America may use the Q1 earning season to repatriate their offshore cash.

  5. Continued Chinese deleveraging will limit the ability of the PBOC to match further Fed hikes.

  6. The flatness (steepness) of the US (Eurozone) yield curve means foreign investors will only consider currency unhedged (hedged) investment in US (Eurozone) bonds.

  7. The fiscal risk premium in the USD is already very high.

  8. Divergence between momentum and positioning are turning the tables on overextended EUR longs.

And EURUSD broke below its 200DMA…

Everything is coming together for a summer of greenback gains.

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Steve Cohen’s Point72 Names New Head Of US Trading

Having reopened Point72 as a traditional hedge fund at the start of the year after the expiration of his insider trading penalty (and already swimming in well over $3 billion in outside capital) hedge fund “information arbitrage” legend Steve Cohen has been busy ramping up his ranks, recently adding former Goldman and Morgan Stanley traders, not long after October’s departure of the hedge fund’s trop trader, Phil Villhauer, who had been with SAC since 2002.

To be sure, Villhauer’s departure left big shoes to fill, however Cohen appears to have done just that, when this morning Point72 announced the fund has named Dan Lota its new Head of U.S. Trading. According to the release, “Lota was named after the Firm conducted an extensive candidate search” and ended up hiring internally.

“We have concluded that the best candidate already sits within the Firm,” said the co-heads of Point72’s Central Liquidity Group, Drs. Hamid Biglari and Massoud Heidari. The Central Liquidity Group is Point72’s global trading organization.

“During his six-month tenure as Acting Head of U.S. Trading, Dan has done a superb job leading the U.S. traders,” said Dr. Biglari.

“In his 15 years at Point72, Dan has built strong relationships with Steve, Portfolio Managers, within the trading team, and has developed a deep institutional knowledge of the Firm,” said Dr. Heidari.

Having kept a very low public profile, it is not immediately clear what Lota’s product/strategy focus will be at what many believe will soon re-emerge as one of the most important hedge funds in the market.

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West Coast Rapper Issues “Crip Alert” To “Fu*k Kanye Up”,”Bang On His Ass”

A former associate of rapper Snoop Dogg has put out a nationwide “Crip alert” for Kanye West on social media, calling on “all the Crips out there” to “Fu*k Kanye up” over West’s support of Donald Trump and black conservative Candace Owens. 

“Yo national alert, all the Crips out there, y’all f— Kanye up,” reads an Instagram post by Delmar Drew Arnaud, aka Daz Dillinger of the “The Dogg Pound,” as reported by a Los Angeles CBS affiliate before it was removed. 

“Better not ever see you in concert,” added Arnaud. “Better not ever see you around the LBC [Long Beach]. Better not ever see you around California. Stay in Calabasas, ya hear me? ‘Cuz we got a Crip alert for Kanye. You don’t speak on Crip gods, n—. We the Crips gods, n—. You know what I’m saying? … All the Crips out there, you see that n—, bang on his a— . F— his a— up.”

Arnaud also tweeted a link to his Instagram video.

In reaction to the video, rapper 50 cent wrote on Instagram “Crips Vs Kardashian’s – get the strap.”

West shocked fans on April 21 when he tweeted his support for Candace Owens, a black conservative and director of urban engagement for Turning Point USA – who feels that black Americans are “slaves on the Democratic Party plantation.” 

Over the next few days, Kanye came out of the closet over his views, tweeting to fans that the “mob can’t make me not love him,” referring to Trump. “He is my brother. I love everyone,” adding “I don’t agree with everything anyone does. That’s what makes us individuals. And we have the right to independent thought.” 

A little later, Kanye tweeted a picture of himself in a red MAGA hat, posing with two men, one of whom is YouTube global head of music Lyor Cohen who is flashing an “OK” sign. A YouTube rep told SPIN magazine that “The hand gesture made by Lyor Cohen is representative of the company he founded, 300 Entertainment and absolutely nothing more.” 

President Trump gave Kanye a virtual fist-bump in response: 

Five minutes later, Kanye tweeted a signed MAGA hat: 

Then, at 5:29, two hours later, political advisor Ali Alexander suggested that Kanye’s friend and fellow-Chicago entertainer, Chance the Rapper, support Kanye… which Chance did 20 minutes later, tweeting “Black people don’t have to be democrats.“ 

Shortly after Chance’s support, Kanye tweeted that “Obama was in office 8 years and nothing in Chicago changed.” 

Trump, meanwhile, sent the ATF to Chicago on June 2017 to help with police operations. The Chicago murder rate has dropped sharply since the 2016 election. Homicides were down 16% in 2017 vs 2016, while the Year-to-date figure as of April 30, 2018 stands at 153 homicides vs. 192 in 2017, a 20% decrease. 

Over the last few days, Kanye has been “schooled” by entertainers John Legend.

Earlier this week the two music icons let politics get in between their friendship when the “Gold Digger” rapper tweeted praise for President Donald Trump. He then posted text messages from Legend who said, ““You’re way too influential to endorse who he is and what he stands for…So many people who love you feel so betrayed right now because they know the harm that Trump’s policies cause, especially to people of color. Don’t let this be part of your legacy.”

West then accused Legend of “manipulating” his thoughts.

“I love you John and I appreciate your thoughts. You bringing up my fans or my legacy is a tactic based on fear used to manipulate my free thought,” he wrote in the private conversation that was blasted on social media. –Page Six

Legend and West have since made up, with Kanye tweeting a selfie accompanied by the text “We got love. Agree to disagree.” 

Kanye and Legend, and “Charlamagne Tha God” have most recently been going back and forth with others over whether or not Democrats and Republicans switched platforms in the 1960s, prompting Twitter users to chime in with 

And while Kanye absorbs both sides of a history lesson, he must now contend with a nationwide Crip alert. 

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Turkey Calls On Europe To Criminalize “Islamophobia”

Authored by Uzay Bulut via The Gatestone Institute,

  • Given Turkey’s inhospitable treatment of non-Muslims throughout the ages, it is the height of hypocrisy for its foreign minister to complain about Europe’s attitude towards Muslims, which has been the opposite of Islamophobic.

  • To refresh Çavuşoğlu’s memory, a review of Turkey’s record is in order.

  • By proposing to block all criticism of Islam on the grounds that it is “extremist, anti-immigrant, xenophobic and Islamophobic,” Çavuşoğlu is revealing that he would welcome banning free speech to protect a religious ideology.

At an event held in on April 11 to unveil the 2017 European Islamophobia Report — released by the Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research — Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Çavuşoğlu called on EU governments to criminalize Islamophobia.

“There is no ideology or terminology called ‘Islamism’; There is only one Islam and it means ‘peace,'” he declared — incorrectly: salaam means peace; Islam means submission. He also claimed that populist politicians are “increasingly engaging in extremist, anti-immigrant, xenophobic, and Islamophobic rhetoric to get a few more votes,” and that “centrist politicians are… using a similar rhetoric to get back the votes they have lost.”

Urging all politicians to recognize Islamophobia as “a hate crime and a form of racism” in their constitutions, Çavuşoğlu accused European judiciaries of applying a double standard by not paying as much attention to Islamophobia as they do to anti-Semitism. Using the Holocaust as an analogy, he continued: “There is no need to relive Auschwitz or wait for Muslims to be burned in gas chambers like Jewish people.”

Çavuşoğlu’s view is not new, but it is a gross distortion of past and contemporary history; it seems shaped by a notion that Islam is superior to other religions, as well as from surah 9:33 of the Quran:

“It is He who has sent His Messenger with guidance and the religion of truth to manifest it over all religion…” (Sahih Translation)

Çavuşoğlu’s views also echo those of the Turkish government, headed by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Non-Muslims, as we all have been seeing, are persecuted throughout the Islamic world. Muslims in Europe, on the other hand, enjoy equal rights and religious liberty. Unfortunately, many radical imams use the freedoms granted to them by European democracies to preach Jew-hatred and violent jihad, to recruit fightersand to establish sharia (Islamic) law courts in their neighborhoods.

Some Muslims, inspired by the teachings of and atmosphere created by these imams, engage in gruesome, religiously motivated crimes against non-Muslims. A disabled 85-year-old Holocaust survivor, for instance, was recently raped, tortured and murdered in her Paris apartment by an extremist Muslim.

Çavuşoğlu, in his talk against Islamophobia, did not mention the atrocities committed by radical Islamists in Europe. Those abuses are at the root of the debate about how to tackle the calls to violence in Islam without hampering the civil liberties of law-abiding Muslims. By proposing to block all criticism of Islam on the grounds that it is “extremist, anti-immigrant, xenophobic and Islamophobic,” Çavuşoğlu is revealing that he would welcome banning free speechto protect a religious ideology.

Given Turkey’s inhospitable treatment of non-Muslims throughout the ages, it is the height of hypocrisy for its foreign minister to complain about Europe’s attitude towards Muslims, which has been the opposite of Islamophobic. To refresh Çavuşoğlu’s memory, a review of Turkey’s record is in order.

Non-Muslims in Turkey have been exposed to severe persecution and attempts at annihilation, such as the 1914-1923 Christian genocide; the 1941-1942 conscription of the “twenty classes,” of all male Christians and Jews, including the elderly and mentally ill; and the 1942 Wealth Tax, which aimed to impoverish non-Muslims and transfer their wealth to Muslims.

Today, only 0.2 percent of Turkey’s population of nearly 80 million is Christian or Jewish.

The following is a brief account of how Turkish governments have rid the country of its non-Muslim citizens:

Greeks: There are fewer than 2,000 Greeks left in Istanbul, which, until the 15th century Ottoman Turkish invasion, was the Greek city of Constantinople. Even despite its tiny size, the community still suffers from violations of its rights. Among these was the forced closure in 1971 of the Orthodox Halki Seminary, the only school for training the leadership of Orthodox Christianity. Since that time, the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the spiritual center of Orthodox Christianity, based in Turkey, has been unable to train clergy and potential successors for the position of patriarch.

It is also important to note that the cities in Asia Minor or Anatolia, which were established by Greeks during the 9th and 8th centuries B.C., no longer have any Greeks. They were either murdered, deported or forced to flee severe persecution, including the anti-Greek pogrom of September 1955 in Istanbul, and the 1964 expulsion of Greeks from all over Turkey.

Armenians: Even after the 1915 genocide, in which 1.5 million Armenians perished, the persecution of Armenians in Turkey did not end. Since then, the remaining Armenians have witnessed the continued seizure of their property and other assets. In addition, verbal and physical attacks against Armenian community members, schools and the only Armenian newspaper in the country by the Turkish public and the media are still common.

Jews: Since 1923, when the Turkish Republic was established, Jews have been exposed to systematic discrimination and various pressures. The laws that excluded Jews and other non-Muslim citizens from certain occupations in the 1920s and blocked the Jews’ freedom of movement; the 1934 anti-Jewish pogrom in eastern Thrace, and the continued anti-Jewish hate speech in the Turkish media and certain political circles are among the forms of persecution and discrimination against Jewish citizens of Turkey.

Assyrians: According to the Minority Rights Group International, Assyrian Christians in Turkey

“suffered forced evictions, mass displacement and the burning down of their homes and villages, abductions (including of priests,) forced conversions to Islam through rape and forced marriage, and murder. These pressures, and other insidious forms of persecution and discrimination, have decimated the community.”

Today, there are only around 20,000 Assyrians left in the country. And they are still struggling to open an elementary school in Istanbul, as the government refuses to grant them any financial support. Meanwhile, both the government and some Muslim Kurdish locals in southeast Turkey continue to seize their lands and property illegally.

Protestants: The Turkish government does not recognize the Protestant community as a “legal entity.” Hence, according to a 2017 human rights violations report by Turkey’s Association of Protestant Churches, Protestants are still devoidof the right freely to establish and maintain places of worships. Other problems encountered by Protestants include but are not limited to hate crimes and speech, verbal and physical attacks and workplace discrimination.

Yazidis: The Turkish government does not recognize Yazidism as a religion. Therefore, the “religion” box on the ID papers of Yazidis in Turkey is either left blank or marked with an “X.” Due to continued persecution and pressure from the government and society, many Yazidis from Turkey have fled to Europe. Their privately-owned lands were reportedly invaded and their owners threatened. Some of their abandoned villages have become uninhabitable. Most of the former Yazidi villages in Turkey have been completely Islamized. The estimated population of Yazidis in the country today is approximately 350 — excluding the recent asylum-seekers from Iraq and Syria. Recently it was reported:

“The Yazidis, who were recently the target of massacre, rape and sex slavery by Isis, are now facing forcible conversion to Islam under the threat of death from Turkish-backed forces which captured the Kurdish enclave of Afrin on 18 March.”

Alevis: The Turkish government does not recognize Alevism, another minority faith. Alevis in Turkey have been subjected to perpetual massacres and pogroms, including: the 1937-1938 Dersim (Tunceli) Massacres, the 1978 Malatya Massacre, the 1978 Sivas Massacre, the 1978 Maras Massacre, the 1980 Corum Massacre, the 1993 Sivas Massacre and the 1995 Gazi Massacre. Today’s Alevis in Turkey are still often exposed to threats and arbitrary arrests.

The faces of many of the victims who were murdered in the 1993 Sivas massacre of Alevis are featured on this poster, used in a 2012 commemoration in Germany. (Image source: Bernd Schwabe, Wikimedia Commons)

Since the 11th century — when Turkic tribes originally from Central Asia, who had converted to Islam and began occupying cities in Asia Minor and the Armenian highland — Turks seem to have had a tradition, as above, of being unneighborly to non-Muslims. The West needs to be reminded that this tradition is alive and well in modern Turkey.

Çavuşoğlu’s critique of Europe may have been an attempt to cloud his country’s sordid past and precarious present, but it should serve as a warning about the danger posed to liberal democracies the world over.

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