finance – Page 9953

Grade-Changing Scandal: Judge Orders Baltimore City Schools To Release Documents

A Baltimore City Circuit Court judge has demanded Baltimore City Public Schools to hand over all documents Fox45 requested after Project Baltimore filed a lawsuit against the school system to get documents they believed would provide bombshell evidence of a massive grade-changing scandal.

“When I saw the ruling, I was elated because I believe in accountability, and government cannot run amuck,” says Scott Marder, of Thomas & Libowitz, the attorney who represented Fox45 in this lawsuit.

Zerohedge readers have been well informed about Project Baltimore’s mission to uncover one of the largest grade-changing scandals possibly in the country.

The story broke several years ago but has not gained national attention, yet. It all started when Project Baltimore investigated possible grade changing at Northwood Appold Community Academy II, in northeast Baltimore, in August of 2017. Baltimore City Public Schools responded with an internal investigation and found Project Baltimore’s allegations were inconclusive.

So, Project Baltimore, with probably the backing of the Smith family, the family who controls Sinclair Broadcast Group/Fox45 and has tens of millions of dollars invested in the city, sued the school system and won.

“The purpose of a public records law is to hold government accountable. This is an example of that happening, and there needs to be more of it, particularly here with the school system,” says Marder. “It’s a tragedy what’s happened with our kids. When you look at the numbers, it’s extraordinary.”

Marder first filed the lawsuit on behalf of Fox45 about 1.5 years ago. City Schools began to slowly hand over more than 10,000 pages of documents. However, many were redacted. In February, the case went to trial.

Circuit Court Judge Jeannie Hong ruled in Fox45’s favor on all eight orders. The judge ruled that City Schools “willfully and knowingly” violated the law. Now, the school system must hand over all the documents unredacted and pay Fox45 $122,000 in legal fees.

“Had the school board litigated this case without filing frivolous papers in court, the legal fees would not have been nearly as high,” says Marder.

Fox45 points out that the school system regularly asks for increased operating budgets. However, classrooms citywide don’t have basic supplies like paper and pencils. Most schools don’t have heat or conditioning. Somehow, the school spent more than a hundred thousand dollars to fight Project Baltimore in court, a case that they knew was not winnable.

Why did they choose to do that? Project Baltimore asked the school system for a response, but no one replied, yet they did give a statement that read:

“The public has the right to know about City Schools’ activities and affairs, but we believe the Court’s ruling in the legal action brought by Sinclair Broadcasting will have a chilling effect on investigations. Staff members, students, parents, and other members of the community should be able to have reasonable assurance of confidentiality. Without it, they will be less likely to report concerns or respond fully to questions, hindering our ability to identify and address misconduct. We are currently reviewing the ruling to determine possible next steps.” -Anne Fullerton, Baltimore City Public Schools

When City Schools made the argument in court that the public did not have the right to know what was going on behind the scenes, the judge dismissed it, saying the public’s right to know is most important.

“This opinion is not necessarily going to impact other courts, but this opinion should have a huge impact on what the school system does,” says Marder. “The judge very directly told them what they did was wrong. It’s gonna cost them a lot of money, and I don’t think they’re gonna want to be in this position again.”

The court did not give a date for when the school system had to fork over thousands of pages of unredacted documents. Baltimore City Schools are likely to appeal the decision.

One of the largest grade-changing scandals in the country continues to brew in Baltimore. It is only a matter of time before this story gains traction.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2UDgjEd Tyler Durden

5 Reasons We’re In This Mess

Authored by Hardscrabble Farmer, via The Burning Platform,

A lot of virtual ink has been spilled in the past couple of years trying to home in on the source of our discontent. In the past half century or so we’ve experienced quite a few disruptions to the system, exposing deep rifts that were plastered over more than a few times in the past. America is nothing if not the land of skeletons in closets and the more that people are told what they may or may not consider by their betters, the more threadbare the excuses become. Everything has a reckoning, it is the immutable force of creation that established the physics of all things. Every action and all that jazz.

We are in the midst of a very, very dangerous time. Anyone who still believes in the power of the vote to reconcile our differences has not been paying attention. The time for campaigning things away has come and gone and there will never- until this conflict settles matters in flesh and blood- be a coming together of one side with the other. It is purposeless at this point to reason with one another, sides have been clearly drawn and like a family dispute, everyone knows where everyone else stands on the matter.

The premise is simple; there are those who want the heritage America of the past and those who want another country altogether. Those aren’t views that can be reconciled and both sides are convinced that they hold the moral high ground. The conflict has a neo-theological feel to it. It has become a religion to many, the righting of historical wrongs on people living in the present and the only solution is final. There is no compromise with someone who wants you gone.

What most of us do not consider, however, is that all of this, every epic meltdown and scandalous exposure is all a part and parcel of a perfectly natural cycle that has been going on for as long as mankind has existed. It’s what we do. Maybe, if we begin to look at it from that perspective instead of taking it personally, we’ll be able to keep the wheels from falling off of our personal lives, even if everyone else loses theirs.

1) Conflict is why we’re successful as a species. Human beings are soft. We aren’t fast, we’ve got no armor, spines, poison or spray to defend ourselves from attack, our hearing and sense of smell is marginal at best and we’ve got neither fangs nor claws. It takes us more than a decade from our birth to be even nominally able to defend ourselves and when it gets dark our eyesight leaves us virtually blind. And yet we’re still here, more than that we’ve become the dominant species on the planet.

Every survival mechanism, every tool, every improvement we’ve come up with has been the result of our never ending conflict with climate, predators and each other. Our larger brains and co-operative natures worked wonders in coming up with things to equalize our weaknesses by turning inanimate objects into implements of conflict. Long periods of peace for collectives are like long periods of indolence for individuals.

It weakens us and leads to corruption of our spirit as human beings. If there’s no conflict, we create it. Never has it been more clear than in our modern era. Things are going so well that people are ready to engage in a revolution if people fail to use the preferred pronoun. This conflict isn’t something we can avoid, and it is, in fact, something we actually need.

2) Human beings manifest reality. Large numbers manifest it in a way that is supernatural. Events like Burning Man, the Battle of Cannae, those swirling masses of Mohammedans endlessly circling an obelisk of stone, a Taylor swift concert, those are not events made up of individuals, that is a bee hive swarm, an ant colony, a migration of butterflies. The shared joy or bloodlust that takes place on the scale of tens of thousands or even millions is an incomprehensible concept to the individual.

The anger that the current body politic feel for whatever bugbear they embrace is magnified, an ever expanding, anger that becomes societal in it’s dimensions until it cannot be contained any longer by the traditional methods of civility and lawful order. What has happened isn’t anyone’s particular fault, but we all played a role in creating it by buying a ticket to the show. Every tweet, every vote led inexorably to this place and once the collective golem has some life breathed into it, it takes on a form and life of it’s own and it will use us for it’s own ends.

3) Cycles apply to everything. There is no living thing under the Sun that can escape that reality. We are born, we grow, we age and we die. Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter. Lather, wash, repeat. Human beings get to take the ride, but they don’t get to chose where they get on and off. The human cycles float along in Fourth Turnings and they follow them like a blueprint. Some get the best part of run and some get the caboose end and you get what you get and you don’t get upset. We just happen to live in the eponymous Fourth Turning. Please keep your hands inside and enjoy the ride.

4) It’s overdue. Let’s be brutally honest, this really comes down to a battle between good and batshit crazy. It’s never polite to be haughty or superior, but in this case we can make an exception. Sometimes a culture can go off the rails just a little bit and it spells the end of an entire economy and power base, think tulip bulbs, for example. Other times it’s Pol Pot’s Killing Fields. In most cases the trigger is unimportant, but the underlying problems, either of stress and endless poverty, like in Cambodia, or the excesses of too much of a good thing like the guys in wooden shoes went through. Like a good vomit after a night of heavy boozing it’s best to get it out of the system.

In our case the decade after decade of indulgent behavior, increasingly deranged public mores and the atrophy of comfort have turned us into a bloated and corpulent monstrosity in need of a intervention. America is the house that’s been left to the teenagers for the weekend and the parents names are Menendez. This time around the parents have gotten lazy and the kids have been deranged by too much of everything and they both have had enough. There’s no telling which side winds up victorious, but just about everyone on both sides of the divide are ready to rumble.

5) It’s all good, man. While no one knows how things are going to work out in the end, the odds are always in your favor. Civilizations rise and fall, states and nations come into existence and vanish with hardly a trace, but we’re still here. Just as humanity goes on when someone dies, individual lives go on amidst the ruins of fallen empires. Chances are most people will come out the other end, same as it ever was.

It’s always wisest to prepare for every eventuality and even then there are no guarantees, but those who pay attention to the signs and stay above the fray stand a much better chance of breaking on through to the other side, and if not us, hopefully our offspring. It’s a bummer to have to watch the end of what was a pretty bad ass civilization come tumbling down because muh feelings, but it beats a super volcano or an asteroid strike, not to say that those are not a possibility.

This is our time and this is our conflict and it will not be denied. We all must accept the role we’ve already played laying up piles of fagots at the base of the pyre and we must also live with the consequences. When things go medieval it’s going to require a different mindset than the one we brought with us from the 20th century. Let’s hope we are all ready for whatever comes our way.

* * *
The corrupt establishment will do anything to suppress sites like the Burning Platform from revealing the truth. The corporate media does this by demonetizing sites like mine by blackballing the site from advertising revenue. If you get value from this site, please keep it running with a donation. [Jim Quinn – PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Hr422C Tyler Durden

Foreigners Dumped Most US Investments In A Decade In December/January

U.S. total cross-border investment outflows rose to $143.7b in January, that is the biggest net monthly outflow since Sept 2016…

This is the largest two-month Net TIC outflows since February 2009

And the largest 12-month average sales since June 2016…

The breakdown of the outflows show that US Stocks were heavily sold…

In fact, foreigners dumped the most US stocks since Sept 2015…

Despite the selling, there were some buyers of US Treasuries in January. Japan was the biggest buyer… (the biggest mothly buy since Sept 2013)

Thailand and Taiwan were also big buyers in January, and China also dipped its toe back inf for the 2nd month in a row…

But we note that Luxembourg, Ireland, and the Saudis were big sellers of Treasuries…

So, January’s stock market surge was all domestic flow driven.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2XZXdtX Tyler Durden

Bond Yields Plunge To 2019 Lows As Quad-Witch Crushes VIX

10Y Treasury yields lowest close since Jan 2018 and stocks ever-bid…

…despite sliding EPS expectations and macro data…

Makes us think…

Chinese markets closed green once again as two Friday pumps rescued them from the red – a terrifying thought after last week’s loss…

One-way street higher in European stocks this week…

This was the Nasdaq Composite’s best week since November, but the late-day weakness (as quad-witch bias fades) took the shine off of things…

NOTE: the opening panic-buying almost every day this week.

The S&P closed above 2800 and above the quad top highs…

The week’s biggest gains were thanks to a huuge short-squeeze but the last two days suggest they have run out of ammo once again…

FANG Stocks had their best week in 2 months but began to lose momo into the end of the week…

VIX collapsed to a 12 handle today and credit spreads continued to compress…

Treasury yields fell across the curve on the week but 30Y underperformed, scarping along at unchanged…

10Y Yields saw the lowest weekly close since Jan 2018…

The short-end of the yield curve has now been inverted all year, reaching its record inversion this week…

with 2s and 5s now below the effective funds rate…

Market expectations are now for a 16bps rate CUT in 2019, the most dovish since the early Jan crash…

This week was the dollar’s worst week of the year (since early December)

Cable soared this week as hopes that a no-deal brexit was the off the table buoyed sentiment… This is the second best week for sterling since Sept 2017…

EMs rallied most this week…

…with ARS having its best week in over 4 months…

Despite the dollar dump, only WTI managed solid gains as Copper (China) and PMs basically brokeven…

WTI surged above $58…

Gold managed to hold above $1300, but rejected the 50DMA…

And finally, pigs got slaughtered this week but Lean Hog futures enjoyed their greatest weekly gain on record…

Bloomberg explains that a nasty haemorrhagic virus in pigs might be throwing a lifeline to meat producers who have been badly hurt by the U.S.-China trade spat. As the highly-contagious African swine fever devastates Asian herds, Chinese hog inventories are tumbling, and buyers are turning to the U.S.

But all eyes will be on next week as the Quad Witch drift disappears…

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Jfk2Xm Tyler Durden

“Buff My Balls”: Beto O’Rourke Wrote Creepy Poems; Joined Old School “Slaughterhouse” Hacker Group

There’s more to Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke (D-TX) than just cultural appropriation, a DUI and allegations of being a furry.

O’Rourke, 46, acknowledged in an exclusive Reuters interview that he belonged to the oldest group of computer hackers in U.S. history – the Cult of the Dead Cow.

*YOUNGER DAYS: Beto O’Rourke, left, in a photo of his band, Foss. Texas Republicans also tweeted out what appears to be a police mug shot of the Texas Democrat. Handout via Texas GOP Twitter*

Named after an abandoned Texas slaughterhouse, the “Hacktivist” group made headlines for developing tools that let ordinary people hack computers running Microsoft Windows.

Members of the group have protected O’Rourke’s secret for decades, reluctant to compromise his political viability. Now, in a series of interviews, CDC members have acknowledged O’Rourke as one of their own. In all, more than a dozen members of the group agreed to be named for the first time in a book about the hacking group by this reporter that is scheduled to be published in June by Public Affairs. O’Rourke was interviewed early in his run for the Senate. –Reuters

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Fgrxco Tyler Durden

BMO: ” We Have Been Struggling With The Question How Long Stocks Can Continue To Rise”

Authored by BMO Rates analysts Ian Lyngen and Jon Hill

In the week ahead, the FOMC Meeting is the clear focal event as it’s inevitable that this will be a pivotal gathering for policymakers. The market stasis has occurred during a period of policy limbo, where the key question is how low will the dots go. Our expectations are for a lowering of the forecasted path of policy to reflect the diminished growth and inflation outlooks, although our sense is that it will be difficult for the median 2019 dot to fall all the way to zero implied hikes. This will come in contrast to fed funds futures which are pricing in a very low probability of any rate hike, and in fact, an element of easing by 2020. The other obvious question is going to be what guidance Powell provides on the end of balance sheet runoff. At this point, it’s very consensus that the process terminates at some point in 2019, but details such as timing and mechanics remain vague.

In order for the recent economic stumbles to give way to a continued expansion we think that the communication on both rates and balance sheet will need to be far more about the Fed’s willingness to be accommodative when needed. To be fair, that’s really this moment’s biggest question – whether or not the Fed shifted to an on hold stance of policy quickly enough to avert a more material slowdown. Given the way that GDP appears to be shaping up for Q1, it’s not entirely clear as of yet that they have been successful, though additional data going into Q2 will be required to confirm or deny this thesis. While it’s unclear if the Fed is able/willing to deliver a more dovish statement/dot plot than the market is expecting, the obvious risk is that they out dove the doves, as it were. Moreover, too accommodative of communication runs the risk of undesirable implications as investors would begin to wonder ‘what does the Fed know?’ about a potential impending global synchronized downturn.

We’ve been asked several times recently what the next big trade is in the Treasury market, and still see 10-year yields ending the year somewhere in the 2.50% to 2.75% range. We’ll be the first to admit that cyclical resteepening of the curve is really not that exciting, so will also offer that there remains a significant subset of the market looking for another buying opportunity in the front-end, though a push back to that 2.60% to 2.70% range in 2s would be predicated on some more hawkish rhetoric. Is that this week’s story? It seems unlikely that Powell will try to jawbone the market pricing toward an upward sloping fed funds futures curve, at least not just yet.

We have also been struggling with the question of how long risk assets can continue to perform so well. The rally to start the year is a function of the shift in Fed policy, i.e. not data which continues to come in below expectations (the economic surprise index remains near 12 month lows).

Moreover, we remain leery of the corporate sector as a result of the shape of the curve. Although the flattening really occurred last year, the implications of the move come with a 12 to 18 month lag, so this will be the year in which profit compression will become far more thematic. We’ve already seen some of this begin to occur, and it’s the extent to which that trend is going to extend that leaves us more cautious of risk assets.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2HlAl2V Tyler Durden

Watch Live As Trump Vetoes Congressional Bill To Overturn Border National Emergency

Following President Trump’s vow to veto the Republican-led Senate vote to block his emergency declaration to fund his long-promised southern border wall, Trump will sit down with “angel moms” to override the Senate.

Of note, the Senate does not have the votes to override Trump’s veto – his first since becoming President. That said, Thursday’s vote serves as a rebuke of the president by his own party over border security.

Shortly after the Senate voted 59-41 to overturn Trump’s February 15 national emergency which would allow him to allocate up to $8 billion towards the wall, Trump tweeted: “VETO!”

VETO!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 14, 2019

“It’s pure and simple: It’s a vote for border security; it’s a vote for no crime,” Trump told reporters prior to the Senate vote – which he called “a vote for Nancy Pelosi, Crime, and the Open Border Democrats!” in a Thursday morning tweet.

A vote for today’s resolution by Republican Senators is a vote for Nancy Pelosi, Crime, and the Open Border Democrats!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 14, 2019

Trump is also likely to address Thursday’s mass shootings in New Zealand in which several individuals attacked two mosques, killing 49 people. One gunman penned a lengthy manifesto in which he praised President Trump as “a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose.”

Watch:

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2TQ3Hfv Tyler Durden

Bizarro Market: The 6 Questions That Keep BofA Traders Up At Night

While one market mystery is resolved, as bears finally capitulated resulting in $27.2BN in equity inflows last week, the second biggest equity inflows on record and reversing from 13 weeks of outflows thereby finally validating the relentless move higher in equities…

… others remain, chief among which is the unprecedented divergence between stocks and bonds, as markets increasingly price in QE4 .

Yet while that divergence appears to merely be a throwback to the market’s POMO days as traders prepares for the Fed to launch QE4 sometime in 2020, many other frequent questions remain, among which Bank of America lists the following”

What is the “tale of the tape”?
Where are the “green shoots”?
Who is buying equities?
When should we sell?
What’s the most vulnerable crowded trade?
Why are bond yields stubbornly low?

Answering these in sequences, and commenting on this ongoing “resilience of risk assets”, which has seen minimal “profit-taking” on US-China trade truce news, poor Asian export data, and the ECB’s recent capitulation, BofA’s CIO Micharl Hartnett addresses the first question…

What is the Tale of the tape

… and answers it simply: the “pain trade” is still up for one main reason: with new highs in IG & HY bond prices, new lows in volatility (the record drop in the MOVE index), all this shows that central banks are “all-in”, even though markets are not yet willing to trade the “policy impotence”.

Some other tape revelations: even as cyclical lead indicators remains mixed: e.g. XBD, XHB, SOX, KOSPI/ChiNEXT treading water on weak macro; global banks are close to new ’19 highs. Meanwhile emerging markets are showing cracks: China & India aside, “short US$, long EM” consensus under pressure, while at the same time the rally is reversing in “high-yielding” EM FX (PHP, IDR, BRL, ZAR, TRY).

Where are the “green shoots”?

Looking at the big picture, there are no “green shoots” to be found with BofA’s global EPS model forecast now plunging from -2% to -10% on “dire Asian exports & global PMI deterioration” in February; this is a far cry from the analyst consensus of 1% EPS growth in 2019. Meanwhile, as we discussed recently, both the Japan and Eurozone economies remain in recession although the silver lining is that BofA’s European Composite Macro Indicator has finally stabilized after 12 consecutive months of decline.

Meanwhile, there are plenty of “green shoots” in China, where both M1 & new orders rose in Feb for 1st time in 9 months, March (first 20 days) exports up 39% & electricity usage +11%; The cherry on top: Jan-Feb investment at state-owned enterprises rose 6%, first big increase in 2 years.

Putting all this together, Hartnett reaches the same conclusion as Morgan Stanley, namely that Q1 is the low for global macro data, while downside risk for growth is more likely from US where consensus sees Q2 GDP bounce to 3% from 1% in Q1. This is also the bogey: should Q2 EPS come in <2%, the risk rally would end. Yet even the US has some good news, namely US survey data which stabilized in Feb and is correlated and consistent with at least 2-3% US growth.

Which brings us to the next frequently asked question…

Who is buying equities?

While we answered this question previously, it is gratifying to see that BofA reaches the same conclusion as us. The bank frames the problem as follows: global stocks are up 11% YTD despite $46BN of equity outflows YTD and the BofAML Fund Manager Survey showing drop in asset allocation to global stocks.

So if investors aren’t (or at least weren’t until this week) buying stocks, who is? The answer: 3 buyers:

Buybacks: 286bn buybacks YTD (vs. $197bn same period last year);
Institutional buyers of call options: US equity index delta adjusted open interest $544bn, near YTD highs (Chart 5);
Retail investors via single stocks: $13.2bn buying YTD from BofAML GWIM data (vs. $5.7bn selling same period last year).

So now that we know who is buying, the next obvious question is…

When Should we Sell?

BofA here has a simple answer: when the BofAML Bull & Bear Indicator moves above 8. There are three drivers that would push the indicator toward “excess bullishness” in the next 4-6 weeks:

equity inflows >$50bn next 4 weeks
March BofAML Fund Manager Survey (Tuesday 19th) showing cash levels of <4.5%, equity allocation up from 6% to >30%
CTFC hedge fund positioning >0.5sd long risky assets (vs. neutral today)

If that is not enough, here is a second answer: when the combo of higher US unemployment claims & higher credit spreads indicate the onset of recession & debt deflation; or when combo of higher Treasury yields & lower US dollar indicate inflation & Fed policy mistake.

To be sure, with the Fed telegraphing “pause” and soon, QE, the moments of selling is still over the horizon. But one doesn’t have to be exposed to the market to get hurt – just being part of the most crowded trade could lead to far more pain, and far sooner. So…

What’s the most vulnerable crowded trade?

Here the answer is simple: emerging market debt and equity: in the February edition of the BofA Fund Manager Survey, the most crowded trade was “long EM”; since it was released, the price return of EM debt 0.4%, of EM equity 0.3%. And in case that point needs to be underscored, Hartnett notes that “historic returns from month of “most crowded trade” poor, e.g. FAANG+BAT stocks after Aug’18, Bitcoin after Dec’17, US dollar after Jan’17.

And with these five questions down, one last puzzle keeps BofA clients up at night, namely:

Why are bond yields stubbornly low?

The answer: easy central bank policy & still-falling global consensus GDP/EPS/interest rate forecasts best explanation why bond yields low. And here Hartnett makes a bigger point:

this is no normal cycle; yields are lower than they would normally be because policy makers in Japan & the Eurozone are completely out of monetary ammunition from a longer-term perspective, Chinese policy makers are targeting lower and rebalanced growth over the medium-term, and future Fed cuts are likely to prove less potent given level of US corporate debt; thus the message from government bonds remains a world where structural deflation continues to be the primal backdrop to financial markets.

Those traders who correctly figure out how to trade this massive disconnect – the structural deflation as hinted by bonds on one hand, and asset price inflation as stocks scream every day – will make a lot of money in 2019.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2HmNJUp Tyler Durden

Big Bank CEOs’ Pay Tops Crisis-Era Highs “As If It Never Happened”

It appears that market participants’ collective memory reaches about 10 years.

The biggest US banks have now all completed their disclosures on executive compensation, and as Barron’s’ Al Root reports, they tell an important story…

Overall, chief executives at the six banks earned more than $152 million in 2018.

That eclipses the $141 million the same banks paid their top bosses in 2008 – the year before banker pay tanked after the financial crisis.

But they deserve it right?

Wrong! From the end of November 2007 – the 2007-2009 recession began in December – to today, the average total annual shareholder return for those six banks is about negative 0.8%.

The average annual return from holding the S&P Bank ETF (KBE) over the same span is negative 0.1%.

Finally, it is of note that all of the chief executives have changed since the crisis… except one – JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2FgiyIc Tyler Durden

Johnstone: “BREAKING – Everyone Who Opposes War Is A Russian Anti-Semite”

Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

In order to appease the internet censors, today’s Caitlin Johnstone article has been replaced with a breaking report from the National News Conglomerate. NNC: Obey.

Washington, D.C. (NNC) – Following the publication of the results of a groundbreaking new study this week, experts are now reporting that every single person who questions western military interventionism is both an antisemitic bigot and a Russian national.

Research analyst Les Overton is a senior fellow at the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Democracy (ASPCD), a Washington, D.C.-based think tank whose motives we can only assume are perfectly truthful and unbiased. He told NNC that the ASPCD’s research clearly shows that the rate of correlation between an individual opposing western foreign policy, harboring a virulent hatred of Jewish people, and being a citizen of the Russian Federation is “at least a hundred percent, if not more.”

“This is not to suggest that all Russians are antisemites or that all antisemites oppose American wars,” Overton reports.

“Our research shows only that people who do oppose western military interventionism are both of these things.”

These findings track with revelations exposed by respected foreign policy analyst Max Boot in an article published yesterday in the Washington Posttitled “It’s time to retire the ‘neocon’ label”. Boot explains that those who criticize the relentless warmongering of neoconservatism are actually facilitating antisemitism, writing that antiwar voices have been known to use that label “to suggest that Jews are running U.S. foreign policy.”

These findings also help explain the fact that British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and US Congresswomen Tulsi Gabbard and Ilhan Omar have all been found to be arousing suspicion with their irrational affection for Vladimir Putin and irrational disdain for people of Jewish ancestry.

“Take Tulsi Gabbard, a longtime critic of US interventionism,” Overton said while explaining how ASPCD reached its conclusions.

“Her affection for Syria’s Bashar al-Assad is well-documented, and Assad, being an ally of Putin, is effectively Russian. This makes Tulsi Gabbard a Russian by proxy, which probably explains why Putin loves her so much.”

“Interestingly, we have also found this same correlation between individuals who believe that poor people should be treated with kindness, and those who believe Palestinians are human beings,” added Overton.

“We found a direct, causal and completely ubiquitous correlation between sympathy for impoverished and Palestinian people, a hatred of Jews, and an unwavering loyalty to Mother Russia.”

Overton advises westerners who find themselves questioning the wisdom and beneficence of the current liberal democratic world order that they can avoid the overpowering urge to betray their country to the Kremlin and begin loading Jews onto cargo trains by “watching lots of television and just kind of zoning out about everything.”

…

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