Tag: news

Authored by Judith Bergman via The Gatestone Institute,

The British government appears recently to have decided that it would like to give the impression that it cares about persecuted Christians. Prime Minister Theresa May said in Parliament on July 18:

“As a Government we stand with persecuted Christians all over the world and will continue to support them. It is hard to comprehend that today we still see people being attacked and murdered because of their Christianity, but we must reaffirm our determination to stand up for the freedom of people of all religions and beliefs and for them to be able to practise their beliefs in peace and security.”

The British Government even recently appointed its first Special Envoy on Freedom of Religion or Belief with Lord Tariq Ahmad of Wimbledon, a former minister, filling the post. According to the government, the role “will promote the UK’s firm stance on religious tolerance abroad, helping to tackle religious discrimination in countries where minority faith groups face persecution”.

Prime Minister May said she looked “forward to supporting [Lord Ahmad] in this new role as he works with faith groups and governments across the world to raise understanding of religious persecution and what we can do to eliminate it.”

Perhaps the UK should not be so quick to preach to others, when it does not appear to be doing much at home to help Syrian Christians, who have been among the most persecuted for their faith since the civil war in Syria began seven years ago:

According to information obtained from the UK Home Office by the Barnabas Fund, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), during the first quarter of 2018, recommended 1,358 Syrian refugees for resettlement in the UK, of which only four refugees were Christians (no Yazidis were recommended). The Home Office agreed to resettle 1,112 of these refugees, all of whom were Muslims, and refused to accept the Christians.

This decision was made despite the fact that approximately 10% of the pre-2011 population of Syria was Christian – a number that has reportedly fallen to 5%. There were also an estimated 70,000 Yazidis in Syria. Yazidis, with Christians, were among the groups most viciously targeted by ISIS in Syria and Iraq. In 2017, moreover, according to the Barnabas Fund, the UNHCR recommended 7,060 Syrian refugees for resettlement in the UK, of whom only 25 were Christians and seven were Yazidis. The Home Office ended up accepting 4,850 Syrian refugees – of whom only 11 were Christians.

While the UK appears to favor Muslim refugees over Christian ones, the fault does not lie with the UK alone. Lord David Alton of Liverpool, a life peer in the House of Lords, wrote in a letter to Home Secretary Sajid Javid:

“There is widespread belief, justified or not, among the religious minorities of Syria that the UNHCR is biased against them. The UK has a legal obligation to ensure it does not turn a blind eye to either direct or indirect perceived discrimination by the UN.

“It is widely accepted that Christians, who constituted around 10 per cent of Syria’s pre-war population, were specifically targeted by jihadi rebels and continue to be at risk.

“…As last year’s statistics more than amply demonstrate, this is not a statistical blip. It shows a pattern of discrimination that the Government has a legal duty to take concrete steps to address.”

There certainly does appear to be “a pattern of discrimination” that has been ongoing since at least 2015. According to the Barnabas Fund, the UNHCR, in 2016, recommended 7,499 refugees to the UK, of whom only 27 were Christians and five were Yazidis. In 2015, out of 2,637 recommended refugees, 43 were Christians and 13 were Yazidis.

In December 2016, Nina Shea, Director of the Center for Religious Freedom of the Hudson Institute, asked the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees at the time, António Guterres, to explain the disproportionately low number of Syrian Christians resettled abroad by the UN. “Mr. Guterres said that generally Syria’s Christians should not be resettled, because they are part of the ‘DNA of the Middle East,'” writes Shea.

Guterres’ statement was a blunt admission of the UN’s apparent disregard for Christian lives, not least because only 9 months earlier, in March 2016, US Secretary of State John Kerry had said, “(ISIS) is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control including Yazidis, Christians and Shiite Muslims”. The UN itself stated in September 2005:

“[A]t the United Nations World Summit, all Member States formally accepted the responsibility of each State to protect its population from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. that all member states had accepted “the responsibility of each State to protect its population from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity… world leaders also agreed that when any State fails to meet that responsibility, all States (the “international community”) are responsible for helping to protect people threatened with such crimes.”.

The apparent discrimination against Christians by the United Kingdom and the UNHCR is all the more disturbing in light of studies that find Christians to be the most persecuted faith in the world. Christians are “the most widely targeted religious community, suffering terrible persecution globally”, according to a 2017 study by the University of Notre Dame’s Center for Ethics and Culture, the Religious Freedom Institute and Georgetown University’s Religious Freedom Research Project. In June, the ninth annual Pew Research Center report on global religious restrictions also found that Christianity was still the world’s most persecuted faith, with Christians being harassed in more countries (144) than any other group.

In light of these facts, it would certainly appear, as Lord Alton states in his letter, that the UK has indeed been “turning a blind eye” to the plight of Christian (and Yazidi) refugees for several years. Now that May has announced that her government stands with persecuted Christians all over the world, the question remains: What specific initiatives, other than empty words, does the UK government aim to take to rectify the damage that has already been done and to prevent further damage?

The UN recommended 1,358 Syrian refugees for resettlement in Britain during the first quarter of 2018, of whom only four were Christians. The UK Home Office agreed to resettle 1,112 of these refugees, all of whom were Muslims, and refused to accept the Christians. (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

via RSS https://ift.tt/2Mtx6oQ Tyler Durden

China’s ‘petroyuan’ oil futures contract spiked tonight by 5% (their daily limit) to a new record high, coinciding with the re-imposition of US sanctions on Iran.

The first of two rounds of US sanctions kicked in at 12:01 am (0431 GMT), targeting Iran’s access to US banknotes and key industries, including cars and carpets.

This is the biggest daily move in China’s oil futures since the contract’s inception in March to a new high of CNY537.2…

Notably decoupling from Brent and WTI futures, suggesting a sudden burst of contract-specific buying demand in the ‘petroyuan’…

As Ritesh Jain notes, via Valuewalk.com, the Petroyuan… Tiny, Irrelevant, Nothing. Right? But who would have thought oil will start getting priced in yuan.

China can just bypass Iran sanctions by pricing oil traded in Chinese currency known as Petroyuan…

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

The West Hollywood City Council unanimously voted to formally seek the removal of President Trump’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, according to  mayor John Duran who tweeted: “West Hollywood City council unanimously passes resolution asking the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce to remove the Donald Trump star on Hollywood Walk of Fame.” Duran then compared President Trump to a dark wizard from Harry Potter known as a horcrux. 

West Hollywood City council unanimously passes resolution asking the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce to remove the Donald Trump star on Hollywood Walk of Fame. #horcruxdestroyed #bellicose #belligerent #unAmericanvalues #MakeAmericaintoAmericaAgain

— JohnDuran (@JohnDuran) August 7, 2018

Unfortunately for Duran, the vote was largely symbolic – as it means West Hollywood will ask the Los Angeles City Council and Hollywood Chamber of Commerce to remove the star, which was added in 2007. The Monday night resolution against Trump’s star was “due to his disturbing treatment of women and other actions that do not meet the shared values of the City of West Hollywood, the region, state, and country.” 

Similar demands to remove the stars of disgraced celebrities Kevin Spacey and Bill Cosby were refused by the Chamber, which said that stars are never removed since the Walk is a historical landmark. 

“Once a star has been added to the walk, it is considered a part of the historic fabric of the Hollywood Walk of Fame,” said former chamber president Leron Gubler. “Because of this, we have never removed a star from the walk.”

Former Hollywood Walk of Fame Committee Chair Johnny Grant said prior to his death; “Stars are awarded for professional achievement to the world of entertainment and contributions to the community. A celebrity’s politics, philosophy, irrational behavior, or outrageous remarks have never been cause to remove a Walk of Fame star.”

Seemingly weekly pick-axings and political skirmishes between Trump supporters and his detractors may test the resolve of officials, however, as the star has been vandalized numerous times and destroyed twice. 

In full Trump-defiance, West Hollywood gave porn star Stormy Daniels the keys to the city. 

via RSS https://ift.tt/2vL1rIF Tyler Durden

Authored by Martin Sieff via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

The colossal project to re-colonialize the world started with United States President Ronald Reagan eagerly backed by United Kingdom Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1981 and over the next 20 years seemed to sweep all before it.

But we can now see that the creation of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the 9/11 attacks in 2001 marked the turn of the tide.

 Since then one super-ambitious project of nation destruction and rebuilding after another generated by Washington and eagerly embraced by its main Western European allies has collapsed spectacularly.

As if living out one of Aesop’s Fables, the hammer of US kinetic power so eagerly embraced at the urging of neo-conservatives and neoliberals alike following the collapse of communism exhausted the Western welders of the weapon instead of their targets.

The reckless resort to indiscriminate military power in the US-dominated invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the following campaigns to topple the governments of Syria and Libya created unexpected consequences comparable to Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Motion – Every Action has an Equal and Opposite Reaction.

Nevertheless, US and Western confidence in the triumph of liberal, free trade and democratic ideals around the world has remained almost totally impervious to the sobering lessons of recalcitrant global realities. The great reawakening of Western imperial and capitalist resolve heralded by Reagan and championed by his loyal spear carriers, Thatcher and her successors as prime ministers of the United Kingdom continued unabated: Until 2016.

Two epochal events happened that year:

The British people, to the astonishment most of all of their own leaders, pundits and self-selected Platonic guides and “betters’ voted for Brexit: They opted by a narrow but decisive vote of 48 percent to 52 percent to leave the 28-nation European Union. The disruptions and chaos set in motion by that fateful outcome have still only begun to work their way through the political and economic systems of Europe.

Second, Donald Trump, even more amazingly was elected president of the United States to the limitless fury of the American “Deep State” which continues unabated in its relentless and frantic efforts to topple him.

However, the motives of the scores of millions of Americans who voted for Trump were perfectly clear: They were opting for American nationalism instead of American Empire. They were sickened by the clear results of 70 years of post-World War II global imperium that had arrogantly and casually allowed US domestic industry and society to wither on the vine for the supposed Greater Good of Global Leadership.

A decade and a half of endless, fruitless, ultra-expensive global wars entered into by the feckless and stupid George W. Bush and continued by the complacent and superficial Barack Obama advanced this process of weariness and rejection.

Two years after the election of Trump and the British people’s vote for Brexit, the great surge of the West that outlasted the Soviet Union is clearly on the ebb: Now the United States is exhausted, the EU is falling apart and NATO is an empty shell – a paper tiger if you will. Why is this happening and can it be reversed?

Free Trade was never the universal panacea it has been ludicrously claimed to be now for more than 240 years since Adam Smith published his Wealth of Nations. On the contrary, the cold, remorseless facts of economic history clearly show that protective tariffs to safeguard domestic manufactures and advantageous export-driven balance of payment surpluses are the true path to economic growth and sustainable, lasting national power and wealth.

The idea that democracy – at least in the narrow, highly structured, manipulative and patchy form practiced in the United States is some sort of universal guarantee for happiness, national stability and growth has also been repeatedly confounded.

Instead, the Western democratic states have fallen into exactly the same intellectual pit that trapped and eventually wrecked the Soviet Union. They have launched a worldwide ideological crusade and poured wealth and resources into it to ignoring the well-being and advancement of their own domestic economies and populations.

Far from bringing eternal and universal world peace – the alluring Holy Grail of every dangerous idealistic idiot since Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant – these policies only brought failure, frustration and rising military death lists for the countries that pursued them instead.

This year, new hammer blows are following on the Reagan-Thatcher-spawned era of revived Anglo-American global leadership and domination.

The British themselves have palpably failed to cave out any secure or even plausible economic prospects for themselves in the world once they leave the EU. Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Libya all remain wrecked societies shattered by the repeated air strikes that Western compassion and reverence for human rights and democracy have visited upon them.

Now India and Pakistan – two English-speaking democracies and members of the once British-led Commonwealth of Nations, still so dear to Queen Elizabeth II’s aging heart – have opted to bury their existential rivalry and jointly join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization – confirming it as the premier and by far the most powerful security alliance on the planet.

These developments, to echo US President Thomas Jefferson’s telling phrase nearly 200 years ago, are grave warnings. They are firebells in the night. They serve notice to Washington and London that their facilely optimistic “ever onward and upwards” drive to reshape the entire human race in their own image must be abandoned.

Neither the United States nor the United Kingdom is a remotely united society any more. Both of them need to turn inward to resolve their own problems and abandon the fantastic quest to reassert global dominance that Reagan and Thatcher launched nearly 40 years ago.

And they had better move fast. Jefferson’s firebell is tolling and the sands of time are running out.

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

A year ago we featured a detailed report by authors Tom Secker and Matthew Alford exposing just how vast the Pentagon and CIA programs for partnering with Hollywood actually are, based on some 4,000 new pages of formerly classified archived documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

The report noted at the time that “These documents for the first time demonstrate that the US government has worked behind the scenes on over 800 major movies and more than 1,000 TV titles.”

Reviewing the ever expanding list, the average movie watcher might be in for a shock at what films are actually included — there are the more predictable ones like Black Hawk Down, Zero Dark Thirty, and Lone Survivor; but also entirely unexpected ones that apparently needed the military-industrial complex’s propaganda touch like Earnest Saves Christmas, Karate Kid 2, The Silence of the Lambs, Twister, the Iron Man movies, and more recently Pitch Perfect 3.

When a Hollywood writer or producer approaches the Pentagon and asks for access to military assets to help make their film, they have to submit their script to the entertainment liaison offices for vetting. Ultimately, the man with the final say is Phil Strub, the Department of Defense’s (DOD) chief Hollywood liaison, who has been at the helm of this formerly semi-secret department going all the way back to 1989.

If there are characters, action or dialogue that the DOD doesn’t approve of then the film-maker has to make changes to accommodate the military’s demands. If they refuse then the Pentagon packs up its toys and goes home. To obtain full cooperation the producers have to sign contracts, called Production Assistance Agreements, which lock them into using a military-approved version of the script.

The Pentagon directly influences Hollywood — in some cases, scripts are literally line edited by the military. Part of my last book was all about this — I call it the Military-Entertainment Complex. Read this WashPost piece I did summarizing the situation: https://t.co/pT95fQcmPh https://t.co/fudXSJaG9a

— David Sirota (@davidsirota) August 4, 2018

Months ago, Strub was again profiled in a report called Elisting an Audience: How Hollywood Peddles Propaganda, which quoted him trying to push back against the growing media exposure over the past year: “We’re not trying to brainwash people! We’re out to present the clearest, truest view,” Strub told The Outline.

The report rightly noted that while Americans generally pride themselves on living in a free speech anti-censorship society, while simultaneously mocking the propaganda examples in places like Russia or China, the US public is subject to more homegrown state-run propaganda than it thinks:

Military pageantry in Russia, massive rallies in North Korea, blunt messaging from China. We cluck at shameless self-aggrandizing when we see it overseas. But it doesn’t take much effort to see that American propaganda is everywhere, too. It’s not government-made, and it’s not quite as brazen as its counterpart from abroad. But it’s here, and to ignore that a piece of content is, at its core, propaganda — especially these days, while Trump openly pines for grand army parades — is a mistake. “There’s all kinds of ways to make an ideological point,” Harris added. “Sometimes I do think we’re not attuned enough. We do not look hard enough for propaganda.”

And what’s more, unlike in authoritarian systems, in the West it is the consumers that are actually willing, if perhaps unwitting, participants in state propaganda. The Outline report continues:

Certainly, the content has alternative, sincere agendas, too, but it’s the giant, amorphous market of consumers that has called it forth. That’s the difference between our propaganda and everyone else’s. In autocratic regimes, a government-backed entity pushes it onto indifferent or unwilling consumers. In America, we, the consumers, happily demand it.

Want to see what Hollywood films — some recent and some going back decades — that you’ve seen but were unaware had the US Department of Defense’s official imprimatur?

* * *

Below is a merely partial list of films in alphabetical order that had Pentagon involvement either during the script or production phase, according to declassified US government documents. Amazingly the list of 410 movies is but half of the total number (for example, Zero Dark Thirty and some other prominent ones are not on there) and was compiled by the FOIA investigative website Spy Culture. 

 

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

Authored by Jeremiah Johnson (nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces ) via SHTFplan.com,

It is important to review concepts I detailed in previous articles in order to present the topic in this one. A Global State will be almost identical to Orwell’s “1984” when it is realized (“metastasized” is a more appropriate term for the cancer of globalism), in these details:

1. The entire surface of the globe cannot be conquered by a single entity/nation, but spheres of influence can be established that will “offset” one another: “Super-states”

2. The Super-states will be almost identical to “1984’s” of Oceania (America, England, and the English-speaking nations), Eurasia (Russia and Europe), and Eastasia (the Orient).

3. The impossibility of global conquest by one nation-grouping is due to the need for a region ruled to be comprised of ethnically “homogenous” peoples with a leader of that genotype. This serves to “congeal” groups of people while isolating them from the other spheres and creating “enemies” needed by the State to maintain a continuous threat, war production, and a population with one accord.

4. Each nation-group/Super-state will have a totalitarian system in place that parallels the other states and is mutually supportive either through cooperation or through their existences providing “enemies” to maintain a directed, driven population as outlined in #3.

5. A contested area of the globe with natural resources changing hands constantly (the Middle East, Africa, and the Polar regions), with populations relegated to slavery or servitude by whichever Super-state is in charge at the moment.

The UN has been a “paper tiger” for many years, but it is such only from a military perspective. In terms of finances, it has been corralling in the world’s financiers (such as the BIS, the Bank of International Settlements), and establishing a world court (in the Hague) slowly but effectively. From a “dogmatic” perspective, the UN is fostering its phony narratives throughout the world: illegal aliens are termed “refugees,” and Al Gore’s nonsense about climate change has been incorporated into “biodiversity projects” such as Agenda 21 and others that not even the “REMF” (look it up) Senator’s son could foresee.

The UN is globalism, and more: the UN is the vehicle… the convening body of approval, the face, and the administrative apparatus of the coming global state.

These plans have been in existence for more than a century. From the moment the United States was formed, the efforts have been unrelenting both domestically and internationally to control the banking and return administration of the “province” to England, a European power we fought against twice and subsequently rescued twice from two world wars.

Oligarchs in all nations have sold their countries out in favor of an “Elysium” style society on earth, a “1984,” where laws are inflicted upon the peoples as their leaders violate every one of them. A global society where the only words for a citizen are conformity, obedience, and productivity: a planetary “Gulag” broken down into several regions for administrative purposes and where each region is mutually self-supportive.

The concept of the United States as a sovereign nation is a mirage: the reality is a miasma resulting from the stench of decades of controlled dysfunction and destabilization to bring the nation to the brink of collapse while giving the taxpayers the illusion they’re still free and that their votes in the rigged elections still count. All throughout the United States the quality of life – employment, family structure, faith, and true communities of neighborhoods and neighbors that help one another when needed and still mind their own business…these qualities have almost completely vanished.

The votes are only to provide the color of authenticity and approval of the citizenry as the politicians ply their trades: the business of government to enrich them personally while they pillage the nation’s assets, selling them off to other nations and destroying the country. They care not for their “constituency,” and their only honor is to themselves for self-aggrandizement. Their only loyalties are toward power, wealth, and exemptions from the laws that govern other men.

Such is the point that we have reached, and where we are. The illusion is maintained: “We’re strong, united, and defending the Homeland.” All of it obfuscates the true actions and objective:

The United States is being turned into a total surveillance state in preparation for a “collapse,” the complete enslavement of its citizens (Socialism into Communism, complete with gulags), and its dissolution and subsequent “absorption” into the system of global governance.

The NY Post published an article by Rich Lowry on 7/30/18 entitled “Like it or not, America is now seriously debating socialism.” It details the methanous-reemergence of Bernie Sanders in the forefront and his “Medicare For All” plank, a platform estimated by the Mercatus Center (a conservative firm) to cost around $33 trillion for the first 10 years if it’s emplaced.

Really? Socialism? Lenin himself said that socialism is the final step before communism: and these morons are going to eat it right out of the hand of Bernie Sanders.

It is not so far-fetched as you may think: Olympia Snow (R, ME) brought Obamacare to the floor of the Senate, and within a small matter of time it became law…a law that is still bleeding us even after the President knocked the individual mandate out of the picture.

The stultified masses will “bite” on it hook, line, and sinker as another entitlement, and it has the surest method of funding: taxes. The unstoppable, SWAT team and LEO-enforced taxes raised by the politicians upon their serfs, the public. The media has never ceased their barrages against the President.

The globalist vehicle to ensure complete accountability of the citizens from a legal perspective is mandatory health care…and one that cripples the country in the exact same plan that Cloward and Piven introduced to President Johnson that took effect: the creation of a welfare state to implode the system.

A Time Magazine article posted on 6/11/18 by Alex Fitzpatrick has a title that summarizes the fostered complacency and resignation that the Media and globalists are using to mold the people. The title is “Drones are here to stay. Get used to it.” The article mentions there are 1.1 million drones registered by the FAA (don’t you just love that one? More revenue and ad valorem…the “registered drone” business). Of this total amount, 918,000 are listed as “hobbyists,” and 194,000 as “commercial” drones.

This article does not mention the number of drones used by the Federal government, by law enforcement, and by government agencies.

The drones have GPS and Wi-Fi capabilities. They have cameras. Ta-dah! The cameras can be linked, and the images captured and used by the government. The happy Hallmark family in the park doesn’t realize their happy Saturday drone flight’s recordings and images can be snatched up by law enforcement and the fusion centers.

That Petraeus and his “Internet of things” statement is coming to fruition: all of the computers, cell phones, devices in the home, CCTV cameras, data recorders in the cars, trash recycling firms (sifting your trash), satellites, drones…all of it is caging us in. The other countries are leading the pack: China is breaking new ground that will find its way into the U.S.  England (especially London) is a complete surveillance labyrinth.

They’re collecting biometric data from us in the airports, with the CCTV cameras, and with the cellular telephones. The Android model is taking biometrics of pulse, voice recognition, and transmitting user location with composition (others in the room with you). All for no reason, right? Just to foster loving togetherness and a feeling of belonging to a social group…a remake of “teaching the world to sing,” but this time without Coca-cola.

Wrong. The cage has to be emplaced, and laws made: laws to try and wrest our remaining freedoms from us. They want the guns, they want to adulterate the vote (allowing illegal aliens to vote) and destroy the fabric of society. They want to destroy the United States, and they’re succeeding, on a daily basis. Edward Snowden was only able to reveal a small fraction of what is happening, and that information is astounding. Think what they’re doing now, and look what they’re doing, right before our eyes.

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

For any corporation, the Board of Directors plays a crucial role in corporate governance.

Elected by the company’s shareholders, the board is meant to represent shareholder interests – it ultimately hires the CEO, sets strategic objectives, approves annual budgets, and provides accountability to the shareholders regarding the performance of the organization.

These duties are no cakewalk, and, as Visual Capitalist’s Jeff Desjardins notes, finding capable and experienced board members to help run a multi-billion dollar corporation just isn’t easy.

CORPORATE OVERLAP

To locate a qualified candidate, one option is to hire someone that already has experience working on a big corporate board – and because it’s a part-time gig, people can actually be on multiple boards at once.

Today’s data visualization is from Reddit user /r/qwerty2020 and it shows the overlap between boards of the top 50 largest companies in the United States.

It reveals that 78% of the multi-billion dollar companies here have at least one board connection with another company on the list.

THE MOST CONNECTED COMPANIES

Here are the three most connected companies:

3M (7 connections)
The 3M board has 12 members on it, including people like the retired CEOs of Kroger and UPS, and the current CFO of Microsoft.

As for board members in common, there are seven people on 3M’s board that have a connection to one of the other 50 large companies, including: Boeing, Coca-Cola, AbbVie, Proctor & Gamble, Amgen, Chevron, and IBM.

Boeing (6 connections)
Boeing’s board has 13 members, including the CEO and Chairman of Amgen, and Ronald Reagan’s former White House Chief of Staff (Kenneth Duberstein). The former CEO of Allstate and the former CEO of Continental Airlines also serve on the board.

It has six connections to other big U.S. companies through its board, including: 3M, AbbVie, Amgen, Johnson & Johnson, U.S. Bancorp, and AT&T.

Amgen (6 connections)
The large biopharmaceutical company has 13 people on its Board of Directors, including the CEO and Chairman of Phillips 66, the former CEO of Mattel, and a former CFO of Walmart.

In total, it has six people that also serve on other boards: 3M, United Technologies, Apple, Boeing, Chevron, and McDonald’s.

Runners up: (5 connections)
Other highly-connected companies include Walt Disney, Apple, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, IBM, and Procter & Gamble – each has five board members that also serve for other top 50 corporations.

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

Authored by Martin Armstrong via ArmstrongEconomics.com,

The Magnitsky Act Behind the Scenes has been pulled from everywhere. You do not ban a film in Europe and the United States if it is wrong. This is perhaps a huge cover-up that goes really beyond comprehension. The film was funded by ZDF TV in Europe and they have the power to prevent it from being shown despite the fact that they are taking a huge loss. They would not do that unless there was political pressure behind it.

Trump canceled his meeting with Putin he said until this “Russian witchhunt is over.” The Magnitsky Act is being expanded throughout the West. Canada in 2017 passed its version of the Magnitsky Act. Denmark and Sweden moved for versions of the Magnitsky Acts. Estonia voted to ban entry to foreigners deemed guilty of human rights abuses in a law targeting Russia and inspired by the Magnitsky case. We also have versions of the Magnitsky Act adopted in Britain, Lithuania, and Latvia. This is clearly not to help Browder get his money back. This is the start of a narrative that is trying to convince everyone in the West that Russia is the dark enemy and then we MUST go to war to annihilate them once and for all. This is the script that is being sold to justify war.

There is NO WAY that Russia or Putin killed Magnitsky. He would have been a witness against Hermitage Capital and everyone behind the entire case. The way prosecutions are carried out is always to get a witness from inside the case to testify against everyone else.  I do not believe the story being spun that Magnitsky was a whistleblower on government.

He would have been the PERFECT witness to build a case against those in the shadows that may have gone back to the theft of money from the IMF and the Bank of New York ordeal. Putin even said that this goes to the SOVEREIGNTY of Russia – the attempted takeover.

The Magnitsky film never investigated who started Hermitage Capital with the seed capital. It is absurd that Putin would have wanted to kill Magnitsky when he would have exposed how and why the corruption, which preceded Putin, was engaged in taking over Russia.

It also makes no sense WHY would Congress enact the Magnitsky Act to try to get money back for Browder who resigned his American citizenship. They have also used the Magnitsky Act to keep adding people who have absolutely no connection to Magnitsky. The case is far more than just Browder. That is what Putin is seeking access to in the USA.

Is this to protect the justification for war with Russia? Even Merkel in Germany said she feared that  Putin would interfere in the German elections, which never took place. The entire socialist agenda is collapsing. Those in power have NO way to prevent it. The only way that they see to reset the world economy is another war? So pay attention. The peak is probably around 2027.

The national average of deaths of prisoners in the United States attributed to suicide is 7%. They are attributed to really mental torture and abuse. I saw way too many suicides myself and attempted suicides. They were not due to guilt, they were typically the innocent who just see that death is better than daily torment and depression. Nobody gives a damn about prisoners in the United States and there are NO human rights groups that EVER visit or pay attention – I NEVER saw even one ever visit. They chant and yell about everyone else around the world but NEVER the United States. I personally would NEVER donate a dime to any of them including the American Civil Liberties Union – its all just BS.

The ONLY reason the Magnitsky Act has any traction is that it demonizes Russia and sets the stage for war. That is why this film was shut down in Europe and the USA/Canada. It exposes the lie behind the whole affair. They have used Magnitsky’s death to justify war. The film shows that if he was a whistleblower, it was on Hermitage Capital.

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

Last October, when looking at the breathtaking growth in Chinese new debt, we pointed out the one segment where the danger was most acute: household debt, which in mid 2017 had surged by a whopping 43% in one year even as the growth across other debt categories was relatively stable.

In fact, as the next chart shows, Chinese households are on the verge of surpassing the nation’s corporations as the biggest source of credit demand.

But what was behind the surge in household loan demand? As it turns out, it was merely the reality of China’s surging prices coupled with stagnant incomes, forcing countless, mostly young Chinese residents to do what Americans have been doing for decades: charge it.

In a report on China’s brand new infatuation with consumer credit, the FT highlights the case of Tom Wang, a graduate from a middle-ranked Chinese university, who struggling to find well-paid work after arriving in Shanghai turned to the only possible source to fund his spending: credit cards.

“Using credit cards did not feel like spending money, and the debt grew and grew,” said the 26-year-old, whose starting salary of Rmb3,000 ($470) a month could not cover rent and the consumption habits he called “irrational”, such as buying the latest smartphone.

To cover repayments and keep spending, Wang took on more debt,  borrowing Rmb60,000 over four credit cards , before turning to online lenders for a further Rmb70,000. The problem is that interest payments quickly “snowballed” to an untenable Rmb1,500 a month, eating up half of his entire pretax income.

Rejecting the thrifty habits of their elders, Wang is part of a generation of young Chinese consumers who – very much like their American peers – have become used to spending with borrowed money. As a result, as shown in the chart above, outstanding consumer loans – used for vehicle purchases, holidays, household renovations and buying expensive household goods – grew nearly 40% last year to reach Rmb6.8trilion.

Combined with a rapid growth in mortgage lending, which makes up most of China’s household debt, consumer loans pushed household borrowing to Rmb33tn by the end of 2017, equivalent of 40% of GDP. And, as the FT calculates, the ratio has more than doubled since 2011.

Seeing shades of US history repeating itself, some economists fear that the build up of household debt will hurt long-run consumption growth as consumers divert an increasing portion of their incomes to repayments. Large-scale defaults by consumers would put pressure on the solvency of lenders, potentially triggering a financial crisis.

While borrowing restrictions make widespread mortgage defaults unlikely, high-interest consumer loans are more risky. “It’s a Pandora’s box . . . the consumer loans industry has been booming so fast,” said Lu Weiting, chief executive of consumer debt collection company Cuimi Technology. “Over the past five years it has been crazy. The barrier to entry [for new lenders] has been low if not zero.”

While hardly rocket science, the BIS recently warned that household debt can have “negative long-run effects on consumption”, which intensify when borrowing exceeds 60% of GDP. The good news: China’s ratio of 40%, while higher than most developing country peers, is still below EU and US levels of 60 and 80% of GDP respectively. The bad news: the differential “could narrow quickly if left unchecked,” according to rating agency Fitch.

And in China, which recently ended its second brief infatuation with deleveraging as a result of the Trump trade war, debt growth is most certainly unchecked at this point, and at the current rate, consumer debt will hit 60% in about 2-3 years.

For Beijing this loan-fueled spending spreed has been good news, if only for the time being: the surge in purchasing power – all on borrowed money – helped Beijing achieve its aim of making consumption the main driver of economic growth. And, as noted above, as Beijing pushed the corporate sector to deleverage, households became the largest recipients of new credit in China’s banking system for the first time last year.

“It became harder to depend on the corporate sector to maintain growth. So the government thought it could use household leverage,” said Kaiji Chen, an economist at Emory University in the US.

It’s not just the local banks that are behind this tremendous debt tsunami: consumer loan growth has been accelerated by the emergence of hundreds of online peer-to-peer lenders who collect money from retail investors and dispense small loans to consumers, often without collateral. Banks have been reluctant to issue such loans due to the difficulties assessing the creditworthiness of individuals.

Here a problem has emerged: as the FT reports, outstanding loans on P2P platforms rose 50% just last year to total Rmb1.2 trilion, according to industry monitoring service Diyiwangdai; due to their lack of collateral, interest rates often are as high as 37%, with additional charges for late payment.

As for the core consumer, it’s the usual suspects: it is all young men and women, in their twenties: “They feel peer pressure and the importance of investing in themselves . . . It could be English classes, vocational training, weddings, travel, or buying the latest iPhone,” said Benny Li, chief executive of platform Huaxia Finance.

Meanwhile, China’s peer-to-peer lending channel is not only getting clogged up, but is in reverse. In a recent article, the WSJ reported that a string of Chinese internet lenders have already shut their doors in recent weeks, stranding investors as the economy slows and regulators tighten controls over an unruly side of the fintech sector.

Across China, more than 200 internet-based fund managers since late June have either shut down, closed parts of their operations or are reeling from cash crunches, missing executives and other problems, according to industry tracker Wangdaizhijia.

The tide began to turn against the sector as an end-of-June deadline for new stringent registration regulations approached. With a slowing economy making it difficult for some companies to pay back loans, some lenders decided to shut down,. Investors, already souring on the sector, began pulling out funds, further pinching the lending platforms.

The cascade of shutdowns caught Ji Zheng by surprise. The 31-year-old acupuncturist lost the 50,000 yuan ($7,438) he invested in Tourongjia.com when the peer-to-peer lender closed without notice earlier this month. This week, Yindou, a lender with whom he placed 77,000 yuan, shut too.

“Everyone was trying to get out. It was too late,” he said Wednesday at a Beijing police station where he and other investors went to file complaints.

The bigger problem is that aside from occasional anecdotes, nobody really knows how bad the potential P2P hole could be:  The FT notes that aside from a central bank database that provides limited information, China lacks credit data on consumers. While the average US consumers’ credit history dates back 14 years, in China “you are lucky to have a few months — this is our challenge”, said Huaxia’s Benny Li.

“Where we are today is probably similar to the 70s or 80s in the US when Sears and JCPenny were issuing credit cards,” he added.

China’s first unified private personal credit information service, Baihang, launched in February and has signed up 15 platforms, but most still perform their own checks. Huaxia relies on telephone records and calls to applicants’ relatives, said Mr Li. Other companies claim to use AI systems to scour customer’s social media contacts to detect their creditworthiness.

Even with incomplete data, it is estimates that non-performing loans among China’s P2P platforms are about 8% on average — four times the official figure for the banking sector; the real number, of course, could be substantially higher. In fact, According to Lu Weiting, CEO of consumer debt collection company Cuimi Technology, the NPL ratio for the P2P sector could be as high as 15%, according to Mr Lu.

And the real punchline: the proportion of overdue loans is even higher, at a staggering 50%, often due to fraud.

This means that up to half of China’s massive P2P-issued debt could be in default in the very near future, crushing personal consumption in the process.

It gets worse.

Emory University’s Chen estimated that China’s household debt burden was equal to about 80% of total disposable income, “meaning consumption would collapse if households tried to repay all their debt at once.” it also means that at the current rate of debt growth, if one throws in a little more rate increases, all of China’s disposable income at the household level will merely go to pay interest on existing debt!

While a wave of mass defaults will likely not be permitted by the government, a more realistic worry according to analysts is that with average mortgage maturity around 16 years, mortgage repayments will crimp consumption. Chinese households use nearly 17 per cent of their monthly income to repay debt, according to the China Household Finance Survey, up from 11 per cent in 2013. For low-income households, the percentage rises to 47%.

For China, which only recently transformed into a consumer-driven economy, the result would be disastrous.

That burden could “constrain other forms of consumer discretionary spending and enfeeble authorities’ efforts to pivot the economy towards consumption-led growth”, according to Fitch. There are signs this already happening: retail sales growth slowed to 8 per cent this year, down from 12 per cent in 2013.

Still, annual income growth in recent years has averaged around 7%, meaning many households will double their incomes over the next decade, assuming of course they don’t see their debt burdens growth at a faster pace. The good news is that total household leverage is low, relative to bank deposits and other liquid assets, which amount to around Rmb147tn or 180% of GDP, according to CICC. The bad news, is that the bulk of these deposits would flee if China removed its capital controls – as we saw in 2015 – suggesting that the current equilibrium is highly unstable.

Meanwhile, China’s P2P lenders have on final hope: namely that their young borrowers — who are less burdened by mortgage debt but also have less savings to dip into — can avoid default by earning higher wages.

For some, such as the abovementioned Wang, this is indeed the case: he recently found an IT job that pays in excess of Rmb12,000 a month. He owes just Rmb80,000 — which he expects to pay off soon. “If there are no other problems, I will reach the shore next year,” he said. However, if the track record of China’s Millennial peers in the US is any indication, the vast majority of them will not be lucky enough to “grow into” higher wages, especially if the Chinese economic slowdown accelerates. Should that happen, those looking at China’s corporations for the source of the country’s next debt crisis would be surprised: the real ground zero of the next “pandora’s box” will be China’s 20-somethings armed with one, or likely many more, credit cards.

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

Authored by Kari Paul via MarketWatch.com,

The gap between the rich and the poor in America has ballooned over the last several decades.

In 2015, the top 1% of Americans made 26.3 times as much income as the bottom 99 percent – an increase from 2013, when they earned 25.3 times as much, according to a recent study released by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning Washington, D.C. think tank.

A family needed an annual income of $421,926 to be part of the 1% nationally, the study said, but in some states the threshold was higher. The top 1% of Americans took home more than 22% of all income in 2015, the study found. That’s the highest share since a peak of 23.9% just before the Great Depression in 1928.

On Wednesday, Amazon AMZN, -0.60%  founder Jeff Bezos became the richest person of the modern era as his wealth surpassed $150 billion.

The fortunes of people like Bezos and those made on Wall Street, in Hollywood and Silicon Valley fuel much of wealth inequality in the U.S., but the issue affects most of the country, the report showed. The incomes of the top 1% grew faster than the bottom 99% in 43 states between 2009 and 2015. In nine states in the U.S., the top 1% represents more than half of all income growth.

Meanwhile, the median net worth of Americans currently hovers at $68,828 per household. One in five Americans say they have more credit-card debt than they do in emergency savings and less than 40% of Americans say they have enough savings to cover a $1,000 emergency room visit or car repair.

“Rising inequality affects virtually every part of the country, not just large urban areas or financial centers,” said Estelle Sommeiller, a socio-economist at the Institute for Research in Economic and Social Sciences in France and author on the study. “It’s a persistent problem throughout the country – in big cities and small towns, in all 50 states. While the economy continues to recover, policy makers should make it a top priority to grow the incomes of working people while reining in corporate profits.”

*  *  *

And the solution is simple according to The EPI – a liberal nonprofit associated with the labor movement – return bargaining power to U.S. workers, increasing political participation by all citizens, and boosting public investments in child care, education, housing and health care.

“Such policies will help prevent the wealthiest few from appropriating more than their fair share of the nation’s expanding economic pie,” Sommeiller said.

Such ideas have gained popularity as the 2018 midterm elections approach, with New York’s Alexa Ocasio-Cortez winning an upset victory in June’s Democratic primary in New York’s 14th congressional district running on a platform of Medicare for all and reining in Wall Street. She also supports the idea of a government program guaranteeing paid jobs for anybody who wants one.

Critics say such policies are ill-conceived and will “bury us in debt.”

via RSS https://ift.tt/2niOd1W Tyler Durden