While America is theatrically debating whether or not Baltimore is a “rodent-infested mess”, the rest of the world has already made up its mind about America’s inner city slums.
In a travel advisory published on Monday, the Uruguay foreign ministry warned its citizens traveling to the United States after the two mass shootings over the weekend to avoid cities such as Detroit, Baltimore and Albuquerque, which it said are among the 20 most dangerous in the world, citing the Ceoworld Magazine 2019 index.
Travelers were urged to take precautions “in the face of growing indiscriminate violence, mostly for hate crimes, including racism and discrimination, which cost the lives of more than 250 people in the first seven months of this year,” it said in the release also posted on President Tabare Vazquez’s website; a similar warning would instantly be slammed as racist if it appeared anywhere in the US.
Uruguay also warned that “Ggven the impossibility of the authorities to prevent these situations, due among other factors, to the indiscriminate possession of firearms by the population, it is especially advisable to avoid places where large concentrations of people occur, such as theme parks, shopping centers, arts festivals, religious activities, food fairs and cultural or sporting events. In particular, it is recommended not to take minors to these places.”
Meanwhile in Venezuela, which is now the target of a full-on blockade by the US, Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza similarly advised citizens to “take extreme precautions or postpone their travels in the face of the proliferation of acts of violence and hate crimes.”
Demonstrating a biting sarcasm, the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry also cited El Paso and Dayton in a statement.
“These growing acts of violence have found echo and sustenance in the speeches and actions impregnated with racial discrimination and hatred against migrant populations pronounced and executed from the supremacist elite that hold political power in Washington,” the Foreign Ministry said.
Venezuela took particular delight in mocking America’s social de-evolution: the Trump administration does not recognize the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro as legitimate. It has backed National Assembly President Juan Guaidó as the rightful leader of the South American country.
In addition to Detroit, Baltimore and Albuquerque, which ranked 317 through 319 in the list of 334 cities (where ironically Caracas was ranked most dangerous), Venezuela added Atlanta, Buffalo, Cleveland, Memphis, Oakland, St. Louis, Birmingham, Ala., and Stockton, Calif.
For those suspecting there was more here than meets the eye, you are right: the U.S. State Department had issued its own travel advisory for Uruguay on Aug. 2 due to an increase in violent crime, including homicides, armed robberies and carjacking. On Friday it had raised its travel advisory for Uruguay from Level 1 (Exercise normal precautions) to Level 2 (Exercise increased caution) “due to crime.” The highest U.S. travel advisory is Level 4: Do not travel.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2ZFdWTE Tyler Durden
Let’s use statistics and psychological profiles, not inflamed rhetoric, to craft meaningful violence-control legislation…
In these troubled times, American politicians tend to worship at the altar of feelings – especially following inexplicable violent events like El Paso and Dayton. Therefore, it’s critical for them to stop, listen, and learn. In a rush to legislate away these problems, the political elite appears primed to emphasize the wrong syllable, which will result only in more harm than good. Thus, the American people are wise to understand this teachable moment and attempt to educate their lawmakers.
Surprisingly little has been done in recent years to examine the mind of a mass shooter. This is perhaps because most of them die during the catastrophe they initiate. Criminologists are then left to perform little more than a psychological autopsy. Still, forensic psychiatrists can and should shed light on these American tragedies because legislation without the foundation of knowledge often makes the situation worse.
Wisdom From James Joyce
Irish author James Augustine Aloysius Joyce once wrote, “In the particular is contained the universal.” Mining the gold of “the particular” can be especially helpful when seeking to understand a seemingly incomprehensible event. In the Dayton, OH, incident, an examination of 24-year-old Connor Betts reveals a psychological profile startlingly similar to that of other shooters:
He is a single male.
He was a troubled teen.
He once drew up a “hit list” of students he wanted to kill or maim.
He experienced serial rejection from the opposite sex.
A leading forensic psychiatrist and expert in mass murders, Dr. James Knoll, says that “most perpetrators are young males who act alone after carefully planning the event,” according to Psychology Today. These people, Knoll asserts, are “injustice” collectors – that is, they spend a good deal of time living in a world of rejection and past “humiliations,” real or imagined. In other words, these men are world-class grudge-holders fueled by “social persecution or envy.” They are lonely loners searching for significance:
“Aggrieved and entitled, he longs for power and revenge to obliterate what he cannot have. Since satisfaction is unobtainable lawfully and realistically, the mass murderer is reduced to violent fantasy and pseudo-power. He creates and enacts an odious screenplay of grandiose and public retribution. Like the child who upends the checkerboard when he does not like the way the game is going, he seeks to destroy others for apparent failures to recognize and meet his needs. Fury, deep despair, and callous selfishness eventually crystallize into fantasies of violent revenge on a scale that will draw attention. The mass murderer typically expects to die and frequently does in what amounts to a mass homicide-personal suicide. He may kill himself or script matters so that he will be killed by the police.”
Unfortunately, and not surprisingly, Psychology Today uses this information to assert that the best we can do is limit such a person’s access to firearms. However, this conclusion belies a shooter’s psychological profile. What would make the magazine conclude that a violent, deranged man with homicidal tendencies would rein in his emotional and psychological angst to follow the rules and deprive his itchy trigger finger of a gun?
It is illogical at best to believe these people will follow the rules like law-abiding citizens. Moreover, an FBI report on active-shooter incidents that occurred in 2016 and 2017 concluded:
In ten incidents, citizens confronted the shooter.
In eight of those incidents, one or more citizens safely and successfully acted to end the shooting.
In four incidents, citizens possessing valid firearms permits successfully stopped the shooter.
In two incidents, citizens exchanged gunfire with the shooter.
In two incidents, the citizens held the shooter at gunpoint until law enforcement arrived.
Statistics in high-crime inner-city neighborhoods consistently demonstrate that gun control is an ineffective means of reducing the homicide rate. The American people, as well as their representatives, should be aware that the facts and figures, as well as the psychological make-up of the perpetrators, tell a vital story. As LN’s Graham Noble recently pointed out, if fewer guns meant less violence, Baltimore and Chicago would be the safest cities on the planet.
But they’re not, are they?
Thus, it seems only sensible that those who wield the power of the pen and represent us in government not haul off on an emotional bender to prescribe ineffective and useless methods to heal gun violence. The available statistics and psychological profiles of shooters are not simply tea leaves; within them lie the ability to better understand the root of the problem. In the wake of mass shootings, the inflamed and knee-jerk cries for Draconian gun legislation heightens the concerns of law-abiding citizens, who are the ones stifled. Gun owners deprived of the capacity to stop violent acts in progress or defend themselves know this only fuels the ability of homicidal maniacs to turn their fantasies into reality.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2YKlkvX Tyler Durden
China is, to the surprise of many observers, actually mulling joining a proposed US-led maritime coalition to protect oil shipping lanes in the Gulf following Iran’s military confirming it has seized three foreign tankers this summer. “If there happens to be a very unsafe situation we will consider having our navy escort our commercial vessels,” the Chinese ambassador to the UAE Ni Jian told Reuters in Abu Dhabi.
“We are studying the U.S. proposal on Gulf escort arrangements,” China’s embassy later confirmed. The question that remains, however, is which side would the Chinese escort actually be trying to protect? Perhaps Beijing joining such a joint operation is a strategy for attempting to shape outcomes in the Gulf?
After all, while the consideration is on the table it remains that China is among a handful of countries that continues to defy US sanctions, as it continues to import its crude via at least a dozen Iranian tankers, a New York Times investigation confirmed just days ago.
Via Center for International Maritime Security
But at a time the White House has struggled to get its proposed joint maritime mission off the ground, given deep reluctance in Europe, President Trump over a month ago directly appealed to China and Japan via a tweet, saying they “should be protecting their own ships” in the contested region.
China gets 91% of its Oil from the Straight, Japan 62%, & many other countries likewise. So why are we protecting the shipping lanes for other countries (many years) for zero compensation. All of these countries should be protecting their own ships on what has always been….
It remains unclear whether any formal request accompanied the public appeal. China has walked a fine line in the crisis, not wishing to add more fuel to the fire of worsening Sino-US relations, especially with recent failed attempts to mend the trade war.
“We have the position that all disputes should be sorted by peaceful means and by political discussions, not… military actions,” Ambassador Ni continued as part of his comments.
Meanwhile the only European country to enthusiastically jump on board the US administration’s joint patrol plan has been the United Kingdom, with Germany and France trying to distance themselves, even as they attempt to form a European-led maritime initiative.
Should China actually joint US efforts to patrol the Gulf and Strait of Hormuz – an initiative which Tehran has vehemently rejected while saying Iran’s military alone can provide security for the vital waterway – it could highlight an intensely awkward situation and contradiction.
• US ✅
• UK ✅
• China , Australia : Considering
• Germany ❌
• France, Japan, India : Undecided
• Israel : Intel
• South Korea: To send Naval Unit https://t.co/G0IIM9CaRu
It’s ultimately China which plays a large part in preventing Trump’s desire to take Iran’s exports down to zero, as the recent New York Times report describes:
Twelve of the tankers loaded oil after May 2 and delivered it to China or the Eastern Mediterranean, where the buyers may have included Syria or Turkey. Only some of those 12 tankers were previously known to have recently delivered Iranian oil, and an analyst said the scale of the shipments documented by The Times investigation is greater than what had been publicly known.
The continued flow of oil underscores the difficulty the Trump administration has had in using sanctions to bring Iranian oil exports to zero after breaking with allies and partners on Iran policy.
So again the fact that China hasn’t immediately dismissed the US invitation, and appears to be actually considering it, begs the question: perhaps the Chinese navy’s presence as part of a US joint maritime Gulf coalition would gain Beijing leverage in efforts to preserve the JCPOA? Perhaps it could shape outcomes favorable to Iran and block potential US aggressive action in the region?
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/33iDc4e Tyler Durden
The Mexican government, which has contributed heavily to Mexico having one of the world’s worst homicide rates, has announced it may seek legal action against the United States “for failing to protect its citizens after this weekend’s mass shooting in the border city of El Paso.”
In a statement yesterday, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard stated
The president has instructed me to ensure that Mexico’s indignation translates into … efficient, prompt, expeditious and forceful legal actions for Mexico to take a role and demand that conditions are established that protect … Mexicans in the United States.
Yet, it’s hard to believe that Mexican politicians are truly indignant about the deaths of Mexican nationals in the US when Mexico’s homicide rate is nearly five times that of the US, and among the worst in the world. Moreover, Mexico’s homicide rate in 2017 rose to the highest level ever recorded, climbing to 24.8 per 100,000 . Preliminary data suggests 2018 may be even worse .
More than 30,000 homicide investigations were opened in Mexico in 2017. In the US, which has 200 million more residents than Mexico, homicides total around 17,000.
These fact, however, have not stopped the Mexican state from displaying a total lack of self-awareness when it comes to crime and safety.
Ebrard said Mexico would request information from the U.S. about how the weapon used in the attack was acquired by the shooter.
“We consider the issue of arms to be crucial,” he added.
As with homicides overall, it’s hard to believe that Mexican politicians are sincere when expressing indignation about the manner in which Americans acquire firearms.
Gun control is stringent in Mexico, which means illegal gun ownership is widespread, and law-abiding citizens are lopsidedly outgunned by drug cartel members and ordinary street thugs.
The Mexican government — and gun control advocates in the US — have attempted to distract from these fact by claiming the US is somehow responsible for the presence of illegal guns in Mexico, but the evidence hasn’t backed this up.
Trying to Blame Mexican Violence on US Guns
The often-quoted statistic allegedly showing that as much as 70 percent, or even 90 percent, of guns seized in Mexico come from the US is not true. That statistic is based only on seized guns that are also traced by the ATF . How many of all guns seized in Mexico come from the US? According to Stratfor, ” almost 90 percent of the guns seized in Mexico in 2008 were not traced back to the United States .” Nor does the Mexican government ask the ATF to trace all guns seized in Mexico. This is because many of those arms can be traced back to the Mexican government itself.
Latin America has a long tradition of gun production, with some manufacturers tracing their history back many decades. Brazil has the largest arms industry in the region, followed by Argentina. Firearms are also produced by private or government-owned industries in Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela. While most of the production is intended to equip the military and law enforcement institutions, some of the production is for private use.”
The report also refers to “major exporters” of small arms in Argentina, Chile, Mexico, and Brazil. So we know Mexico contains local arms-producing manufacturers to the point that some are “major exporters” who also produce arms for government institutions. And government stockpiles are a source for black markets as well.
Even worse, the same government institutions that work to keep firearms out of the hands of peaceful private citizens, are often in league with the cartels. As a recent New York Times article noted about local resistance in Michoacan to cartel-sown chaos, “Townspeople formed militias to eject both the cartel … and the local police, who were seen as complicit.”
In other words, there is often no clear line between law enforcement and the cartels themselves.
Often, official law enforcement simply can’t be bothered . Things are even worse when, as one cartel member put it, “soldiers and cops are … really on our side.”
Thus, it shouldn’t exactly be a surprise that many of the guns seized in Mexico are coming from official government sources.
Of course, even if it were true that Mexican criminals were getting their guns from the US, how is it that crime wave only goes one way? If guns are the reason for high crime in Mexico — where guns are hard to legally acquire — shouldn’t crime rates be far higher in the US where guns are far easier to get?
It can’t be that Mexico has implemented a drug war. The US wages a drug war too.
Nor can we even fall back on some sort of article about Mexican race or culture. Many US border towns, which are heavily Mexican American in origin are some of the safest places in the US. El Paso, for instance, which is more than 80 percent Hispanic — has long been one of the safest cities of its size in America. Homicide is so rare in El Paso, in fact, with only 20 homicides in 2017, that the El Paso shooter more or less doubled the homicide rate in that city in a few minutes.
Mexican-Style Reforms: More Gun Control and More Centralization of Power
Thus, when Mexican politicians hint that the US is not sufficiently protecting Mexican nationals, it’s hard to imagine which Mexican officials think would be the proper course of action. Should US governments adopt Mexico style legislation?
Given the complete failure of Mexico’s gun-control regime, one would hope not.
Moreover, centralization of government power in Mexico has helped ensure local and state governments in Mexico are unable to address problems on their own.
Although the Mexican political system is technically a federal system, the reality is far different, since the central government tightly controls the overwhelming majority of tax revenues.
Indeed, the federal government has maintained the lion’s share of control of government funding. As The Economist noted in 2003 , most government revenue, including all levels of government, flows to the federal level alone:
Power may be dispersed, but money is not. About 80% of federal revenues are appropriated by the centre; most of the rest falls to the states, though 5% is spent by the municipalities. In Brazil, by contrast, the federal government controls only around half of total government revenues.
Under Mexico’s law of “fiscal co-ordination”, the states’ powers to raise local revenues are restricted. They consist chiefly of fairly small taxes on payrolls and on cars; municipalities must rely on symbolic property taxes. At one extreme, the Federal District, the quasi-state which includes much of Mexico City, raises about 45% of its $8 billion budget itself. Most states are at the other extreme—lucky if they gather 10% of their spending.
For the other 90%, they must rely on federal transfers, divided up under a notoriously complicated formula dating from 1980.
The situation had not changed markedly by 2018 with Robert Velasco-Alvarez noting :
According to Moody’s , the average Mexican state collects only 10 percent of its income. The other 90 percent of the states’ budgets comes in the form of federal government transfers. 3 A former head of our secretary of the Treasury’s Unit for Coordination with the States claims that municipalities account for only 1.1 percent of Mexico’s tax revenues.
In other words, states in Mexico are considerably more reliant on federal spending than is the case in the US. This means more central planning and more nationwide corruption. It’s perhaps no surprise that after 20 years of top-down solutions to the crime problem in Mexico, homicide rates are higher than ever.
So one could imagine the Mexican politician’s version of reform: implement gun control, and centralize political power.
We can see the result of this system at work in Mexico right now.
I don’t say any of this, of course, to try and make governments in the US look blameless or competent. American politicians are certainly not strangers to gun control or corruption, especially in places like Baltimore where homicide is rampant.
Moreover, the US has long made the drug war worse in Mexico by pressuring the Mexican government to abandon efforts to de-criminalize or legalize some recreational drugs. It has long been the policy of the US to use Latin American communities as the battlegrounds in the US’s drug war. With disastrous results for the Latin Americans.
But Mexico’s current posturing and grandstanding over the murders of Mexican nationals in El Paso would be comical if the shooting weren’t tragic. Listening to Mexican officials berate a foreign government about homicides is like listening to the US government lecture other governments about the need to respect the sovereignty of foreign states. It’s just politicians talking and ought to be ignored.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2T9lUSE Tyler Durden
With expectations for another weaker fix (at around 6.9994) tonight, it appears investors are seeking safe-havens (bonds and bullion bid) as equity futures slide.
Gold is bid…
Dow Futures are leaking lower…
But Treasury yields have plunged back to yesterday’s lows (1.67%), dramatically decoupled from stocks…
Smashing the yield curve to new cycle lows (-36bps is the most inverted since 2008)…
So all eyes will once again be on the CNY Fix…
Is China going to unleash hell again tonight?
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/33fpsr7 Tyler Durden
Japan’s longstanding safe-haven status is once again coming back to bite it as the yen appreciated sharply on Monday, returning it to its strongest level against the greenback since January, and capping off a week of sharp appreciation against the greenback.
But following reports that the BoJ, Finance Ministry and others partook in an emergency meeting on Monday to discuss whether to intervene (presumably with the expectation that the yen could soon strengthen to the critical ¥100 to the dollar now that the US has officially labeled China a currency manipulator), some analysts are wondering whether Japanese officials might order a “stealth” intervention by insisting that Japan’s pension funds speed up planned purchases of foreign assets, according to the FT.
One macro strategist for NatWest Markets explained how state-linked asset managers might make this happen.
Mansoor Mohi-uddin, senior macro strategist at NatWest Markets, warned investors that the GPIF and other state-linked Japanese asset managers were likely to have more influence in currency markets in coming months, particularly if the rate cuts by the US Federal Reserve put sustained upward pressure on the yen. The GPIF – the world’s largest pension fund – currently holds around 17% of its total assets in foreign bonds and 25.5 per cent in foreign equities, close to its respective targets of 15 per cent and 25 per cent.
However, its guidelines permit significant fluctuation around those targets, which allows the fund the scope to buy a further $140 billion of overseas securities, according to Mr Mohi-uddin. “In a risk case where the yen strengthens sharply and the Trump administration is adamantly opposed to the [Bank of Japan] intervening on behalf of the Ministry of Finance in the currency markets, the GPIF has the ability to ramp up its purchases of overseas securities and offset much of Japan’s annual current account surplus,” he said.
International agreements give Japan the leeway to act should currency fluctuations negatively impact the economy and financial markets, though some expect Japan will wait to officially intervene until the yen hits ¥100 to the dollar.
The yen’s sudden move prompted an emergency meeting of officials from the Finance Ministry, Financial Services Agency and BoJ. After that meeting, Yoshiki Takeuchi, vice-finance minister for international affairs, said: “As we have said, it is necessary to take action based on the G7 and G20 agreement should currency moves have a negative impact on the economy and on financial markets.”
Although investors largely read the remarks as a signal Japan was technically ready to intervene, most have assumed it would not do so unless the yen moved more aggressively towards the ¥100 mark against the dollar.
Despite traders’ speculation, some analysts, including Wisdom Tree Japan head Jesper Koll, believe that the GPIF is not a political creature and that its attempts to set itself up as a model of governance make the chances of it being dragged into intervention efforts “almost nil.”
But if the Trump administration objects and starts making threats about labeling Tokyo a currency manipulator, the ‘stealth intervention’ is always an option.
“In a risk case where the yen strengthens sharply and the Trump administration is adamantly opposed to the [Bank of Japan] intervening on behalf of the Ministry of Finance in the currency markets, the GPIF has the ability to ramp up its purchases of overseas securities and offset much of Japan’s annual current account surplus,” he said.
And with more market turbulence expected to spark a wave of repatriations, the ¥100 level might not be too far off.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/31orROE Tyler Durden
At this point, virtually all of us over the age of forty have encountered enough “snowflakes” (those Millennials who have a meltdown if anything they say or believe is challenged) to understand that, increasingly, young people are being systemically coddled to the point that they cannot cope with their “reality” being questioned.
The post-war baby boomers were the first “spoiled” generation, with tens of millions of children raised under the concept that, “I don’t want my children to have to experience the hardships that I faced growing up.”
Those jurisdictions that prospered most (the EU, US, Canada, etc.) were, not coincidentally, the ones where this form of childrearing became most prevalent.
The net result was the ’60s generation – young adults who could be praised for their idealism in pursuing the peace movement, the civil rights movement, and equal rights for women. But those same young adults were spoiled to the degree that many felt that it made perfect sense that they should attend expensive colleges but spend much of their study time pursuing sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
Flunking out or dropping out was not seen as a major issue and very few of them felt any particular guilt about having squandered their parents’ life savings in the process.
The boomer generation then became the yuppies as they hit middle age, and not surprisingly, many coddled their own children even more than they themselves had been coddled.
As a result of ever-greater indulgence with each new generation of children, tens of millions of Millennials now display the result of parents doing all they can to remove every possible hardship from their children’s experience, no matter how small.
Many in their generation never had to do chores, have a paper route, or get good grades in order to be given an exceptional reward, such as a cell phone. They grew to adulthood without any understanding of cause and effect, effort and reward.
Theoretically, the outcome was to be a generation that was free from troubles, free from stress, who would have only happy thoughts. The trouble with this ideal was that, by the time they reached adulthood, many of the critical life’s lessons had been missing from their upbringing. In the years during which their brains were biologically expanding and developing, they had been hardwired to expect continued indulgence throughout their lives. Any thought that they had was treated as valid, even if it was insupportable in logic.
And, today, we’re witnessing the fruits of this upbringing. Tens of millions of Millennials have never learned the concept of humility. They’re often unable to cope with their thoughts and perceptions being questioned and, in fact, often cannot think outside of themselves to understand the thoughts and perceptions of others.
They tend to be offended extremely easily and, worse, don’t know what to do when this occurs. They have such a high perception of their own self-importance that they can’t cope with being confronted, regardless of the validity of the other person’s reasoning. How they feel is far more important than logic or fact.
Hypersensitive vulnerability is a major consequence, but a greater casualty is Truth. Truth has gone from being fundamental to being something “optional” – subjective or relative and of lesser importance than someone being offended or hurt.
Of course, it would be easy to simply fob these young adults off as emotional mutants – spiteful narcissists – who cannot survive school without the school’s provision of safe spaces, cookies, puppies, and hug sessions.
Previous generations of students (my own included) were often intimidated when presented with course books that had titles like Elements of Calculus and Analytic Geometry. But such books had their purpose. They were part of what had to be dealt with in order to be prepared for the adult world of ever-expanding technology.
In addition, it was expected that any student be prepared to learn (at university, if he had not already done so at home), to consider all points of view, including those less palatable. In debating classes, he’d be expected to take any side of any argument and argue it as best he could.
In large measure, these requirements have disappeared from institutions of higher learning, and in their place, colleges provide colouring books, Play-Doh, and cry closets.
At the same time as a generation of “snowflakes” is being created, the same jurisdictions that are most prominently creating them (the above-mentioned EU, US, Canada, etc.) are facing, not just a generation of young adults who have a meltdown when challenged in some small way. They’re facing an international economic and political meltdown of epic proportions.
Several generations of business and political leaders have created the greatest “kick the can” bubble that the world has ever witnessed.
We can’t pinpoint the day on which this bubble will pop, but it would appear that we may now be quite close, as those who have been kicking the can have been running out of the means to continue.
The approach of a crisis is doubly concerning, as, historically, whenever generations of older people destroy their economy from within, it invariably falls to the younger generation to dig the country out of the resultant rubble.
Never in history has a crisis of such great proportions loomed and yet, never in history has the unfortunate generation that will inherit the damage been so unequivocally incapable of coping with that damage.
As unpleasant as it may be to accept, there’s no solution for idiocy. Any society that has hardwired a generation of its children to be unable to cope will find that that generation will be a lost one.
It will, in fact, be the following generation – the one that has grown up during the aftermath of the collapse – that will, of necessity, develop the skills needed to cope with an actual recovery.
So, does that mean that the world will be in chaos for more than a generation before the next batch of people can be raised to cope?
Well, no. Actually, that’s already happening. In Europe, where the Millennial trend exists, western Europeans have been growing up coddled and incapable, whilst eastern Europeans, who have experienced war and hardship, are growing up to be quite capable of handling whatever hardships come their way. Likewise, in Asia, the percentage of young people who are being raised to understand that they must soon shoulder the responsibility of the future is quite high.
And elsewhere in the world – outside the sphere of the EU, US, Canada, etc. – the same is largely true.
As has been forever true throughout history, civilisation does not come to a halt. It’s a “movable feast” that merely changes geographic locations from one era to another.
Always, as one star burns out, another takes its place. What’s of paramount importance is to read the tea leaves – to see the future coming and adjust for it.
* * *
Polls suggest that a majority of Millennials now favor socialism. And a growing number favor outright communism. Sometime this year, Millennials are expected to surpass Baby Boomers as the nation’s largest living adult generation. This is one of the reasons Bernie Sanders and other socialists are soaring in popularity. And when the next crisis hits, the situation will likely reach a tipping point. That’s exactly why Doug Casey and his team just released this urgent video outlining exactly what’s going to happen… and how you can protect yourself and even profit from the situation. Click here to watch it now.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2YL7sRR Tyler Durden
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar has been seen getting suspiciously cozy with a political strategist who has been paid more than a quarter of a million dollars by her campaign, according to a Daily Mail report.
Last week, The Mail reported that Omar was spotted dining and holding hands with an unidentified man at a secluded Italian restaurant outside of Los Angeles earlier this year. The paper has now identified that man as Tim Mynett, partner at E Street Group, which bills itself as providing national progressive strategies for candidates, nonprofits and advocacy efforts.
Omar recently split from her husband, and there would be nothing untoward about the two carrying on an affair, if it weren’t for the fact that Omar’s campaign has paid Mynett’s firm more than $250,000 in consulting fees and travel expenses between August and June 11, per FEC records.
Word of the intimate dinner spread just days after the Daily Mail reported that Omar had recently split with her husband, Ahmed Hirsi, the father of her three children.
Mynett, it appears, is still married to a Washington DC-area doctor who is 17 years his senior. But the two are no longer living together.
In a video taken by the Daily Mail, Mynett can be heard asking the reporter to turn his camera off.
Reps for both Omar and Mynett declined to comment to the Daily Mail about whether the two are having an affair. But the paper trail of payments is enough to raise questions about whether Omar was having an affair with one of her campaign’s top consultants while paying him thousands of dollars.
Federal Election Commission records show Omar’s team began paying Mynett’s company in August of 2018, splashing out $62,500 by the end of 2018.
Payments continued into 2019, with $5,000, $10,000 and $12,000 chunks being shelled out every month, totaling just over $253,000 in a single year.
In January, Mynett posted an image on his Instagram of Omar’s name plaque outside of her congressional office, writing: ‘It’s been one hell of a journey. Incredibly proud of this fearless woman.’
Mynett and fellow veteran Democratic strategist William Hailer run E Street from a shared WeWork office space in DC. According to a profile on the E Street site that has since been removed, Mynett has served as lead fundraiser for a number of notable dems including Keith Ellison, Omar’s predecessor in her House seat, Senator Jeff Merkley, Congresswoman Hilda Solis and Congressman Ron Kind.
He has also worked for several national non-profits and progressive groups, including Angelina Jolie’s Global Action for Children and the SEIU’s Change that Works initiative (which was focused on passing ObamaCare, legislation that Omar herself is now seeking to undo in favor of Medicare for All).
Their website currently has a single accessible page displaying the message: ‘Accepting new clients by referral only.’ But an archived version accessed by DailyMail.com includes a lengthy ‘about us’ section where Mynett reels off his career accomplishments and boats of close ties with ‘national opinion leaders’.
‘Tim Mynett brings over 15 years of experience conducting high-level national fundraising and providing political and strategic advice to our clients at E Street Group,’ it says.
‘He has continually developed and implemented successful fundraising plans for national nonprofits, progressive advocacy efforts, and Democratic leaders in Congress. Throughout his career he has raised of over $100 million in gifts, grants, and donations.’
Here’s a list of all of Omar’s disbursements filed under ‘operating expenditures’ on the FEC’s database.
Notably, Mynett was sitting front and center during the infamous speech where Omar described the 9/11 hijackers as “someone doing something.”
Omar first married Hirsi in an Islamic ceremony in 2002 when she was 19, but the two divorced six years later. The next year, Omar married British Citizen Ahmed Nur Said Elmi. Media reports have identified him as her brother, though due to poor recordkeeping in her home country of Somalia, that can’t be conclusively proven.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2MKfgBk Tyler Durden
Members of the press and democracy advocates issued grave warnings about the future of journalism in the United States on Monday after the nation’s two largest newspaper publishers unveiled plans for a $1.4 billion merger that, if approved, will spawn an “unprecedented” media conglomerate.
GateHouse Media announced Monday that it will purchase Gannett, which owns USA Today and other major American newspapers. While the media giants touted their commitment to “journalistic excellence” in a press release, the merger announcement came with plans for $300 million in annual budget cuts.
A GateHouse Media owned Palm Beach Post and the Gannett Co. owned USA Today are seen for sale at a newsstand on August 05, 2019 in Palm Beach, Florida. (Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
“Not good news for journalism,” tweetedNew York Times reporter Eric Lipton in response to the planned cuts.
Michael Copps, former FCC commissioner and Common Cause special adviser, said in a statement that the cuts mean “we can expect to see more reporter layoffs and consolidated newsrooms.”
According to Common Cause—
“a combined GateHouse-Gannett entity would own one in every six newspapers in the nation and control over 100 local news operations.”
“The GateHouse-Gannett merger is another nail in the coffin for the state of our news and information system,” Copps said. “Combining the two largest newspaper chains would lead to cost-cutting strategies straight out of the Wall Street playbook.”
“The profits generated from cutting costs won’t be invested into improving the news but rather to pay off financing arrangements and shareholders,” Copps added. “Hundreds of communities and ultimately our democracy will pay the price for this deal. Less journalism and less deep-dive investigative reporting will only lead to less informed citizens.”
As the Associated Pressreported, the GateHouse-Gannett merger comes amid a years-long trend of print consolidation as local newspapers struggle, often unsuccessfully, to stay afloat.
According to the AP:
Local papers, faced with the complex and expensive process of building digital businesses to replace declines in print ads and circulation, have been consolidating madly in recent years. Although papers with national readerships like the New York Times and the Washington Post have had success adding digital subscribers, local papers with local readerships find it much more difficult. Hundreds of such papers have closed, and newsrooms have slashed jobs.
According to a study by the University of North Carolina, the U.S. has lost almost 1,800 local newspapers since 2004. Newsroom employment fell by a quarter from 2008 to 2018, according to Pew Research, and layoffs have continued this year.
Journalists immediately raised alarm that the GateHouse-Gannett merger could be another devastating blow to crucial on-the-ground local reporting.
“We’re afraid of that big number: $300 million,” Andrew Pantazi, a reporter for the Florida Times-Union and president of the newspaper’s guild, told the Washington Post. “We’re afraid of what happens when you have fewer journalists working in the state of Florida.”
Jane Hall, a professor of journalism and media studies at American University, said the laser-focus on profit in American media is “depressing” and ultimately unsustainable.
“The business model is under duress,” Hall told the Post, “and the urge to consolidate and the pressure to consolidate and only look at the bottom line in a very short-sided way is growing.”
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/31fEs6C Tyler Durden
As the global synchronized decline builds momentum, smartphone sales across many regions of the world will remain depressed in 2019.
Gartner, Inc., a research and advisory firm, has published a new report that details sales of smartphones to consumers will total 1.5 billion units in 2019, a 2.5% decline YoY.
The report said Japan, Western Europe, and North America are regions where most of the slump is originating from.
Gartner analysts expect smartphone sales to grow in 2020, driven by the launch of 5G models in various parts of the world by communications service providers (CSPs). Analysts expect Apple to reveal its first 5G Apple iPhone for commercial launch next year.
“Lengthening smartphone replacement cycles and a ban on Huawei accessing technology from U.S.-based suppliers weakened demand for smartphones in the first half of 2019,” said Annette Zimmermann, research vice president at Gartner. “We expect demand to get even weaker in the second half as replacement of high-, low- and mid-end smartphones continues to slow, due to low value benefits.”
Zimmermann expects 5G smartphone sales to start increasing in 2H20 because of coverage and availability will begin to increase with CSPs.
“Although leading mobile manufacturers have started positioning their first 5G smartphones (such as the LG V50 ThinQ, OPPO Reno 5G, Samsung Galaxy S10 5G and Xiaomi Mi MIX 3 5G), and CSPs have started to offer some aggressively priced 5G service packages, 5G smartphone sales are set to remain small in 2019. Sales will start to ramp up in the second half of 2020 as the coverage and availability of 5G hardware services improve,” said Zimmermann.
FY’19 projections for 5G smartphones sales across the world are about 15 million units, which represents less than 1% of total smartphone sales for the year.
Analysts found that Japan (-6.5%), Western Europe (-5.3%) and North America (-4.4%) will experience the most significant smartphone declines this year: “In mature markets, the high-end smartphone market is particularly oversupplied and commoditized, with higher average selling prices (ASPs) and no compelling new utility or experiences for users to upgrade to. Despite ASP increases on high-end smartphones slowing down recently, the vendors who primarily rely on replacement smartphone sales continue to face tough times,” said Roberta Cozza, senior research director at Gartner.
Gartner sees widespread deterioration for 2H19, continuing the trend from earlier in the year. The weakness in smartphone sales comes as the industry’s growth rate in global sales has declined since about 2015.
Another reason for slowing sales is the trade war that created massive amounts of uncertainties that have amplified a structural slowdown around the world. President Trump’s economic war against China and Huawei this year have certainly not helped the industry’s overall health: “The ban on Huawei (even though currently partially lifted) has created negativity around the Huawei brand and is likely to open a few opportunities for other manufacturers in overseas markets such as Western Europe,” said Zimmerman. “Despite the US administration’s directive that allows US suppliers to work with Huawei again, the situation remains unclear. The latter part of the second quarter of 2019 was certainly challenging for Huawei in EMEA and Latin America. However, its leading position in its home market remained unchanged.”
And in a separate report, we recently detailed how a global smartphone bust has been underway for some time, has led to a surprising new trend that sheds light on one reason why the Trump administration has waged war on China: Huawei has replaced Apple as No.2 smartphone maker in the world.
With Western smartphone makers becoming less relevant in global markets, and the launch of 5G next year, most likely dominated by Huawei and Samsung, could further explain how America’s global dominance is dying.
As cycles boom, then eventually bust, out with the old [American domiance], and in with the new [Asian dominance]. The world is rapidly reshaping away from the West.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2M4zZ2V Tyler Durden
